Shabbat message

I’m delighted to be back in Ottawa and KBI for the spring. Josette and I look forward to greeting many of you on Pesach and at different celebrations and occasions this season.  

Preparing for Pesach culminates this weekend with Shabbat Hagadol, final cleaning and cooking, the sale and nullification of hametz, checking on haggadot and setting the table for Seder. Whether gathering with family or friends, or marking Pesach solo, this yom tov occurs after much anticipation and anxiety. 

I have memories of cleaning for Pesach and sitting for Seder with my mother. We usually celebrated alone. I remember my excitement as we took out the pots, pans and china. I recall the reading of the haggadah and my competence gradually increasing from reciting the Four Questions to the midrashic Telling (maggid), the singing of Hallel, the ritual of Matzah and Maror, and enjoying the traditional foods of the holiday. Later in life, as Josette and I celebrated with friends and created our own family, I came to appreciate what adding more participants added to our Seder experience.  

Every year, when we recite Mah Nishtanah (how different is this night!), we are drawn beyond the ritual Four Questions to consider our own lives. Is a loved one missing? Has an engagement or a wedding expanded our gathering? Is our Seder in a different setting, a new home? What has changed in our lives since last Passover? 

At Seder this year, our personal joys and sadnesses are experienced along with the larger events affecting the Jewish people. The brutal butchery of the October 7 (Shmini Atzeret) attacks in Israel still inhabits our minds and hearts. At Seder tables throughout Israel, the seats of those murdered that day, of soldiers killed in battle and of hostages held in Gaza are empty. You may want to leave a chair empty at your Seder, perhaps with a yellow ribbon, as a Mah Nishtanah reminder of that troubling reality.   

This prayer, which you might want to include in your Seder, strives to articulate the many emotions that Jews are experiencing this Passover.  

https://www.ajc.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2024-04/Seder-Prayer-2024.pdf 

The Seder is a time for affirmations as well as for questions. Some family conversations may be challenging this year; anticipating them may make us anxious. Yet we are bearers of a tradition of storytelling and deep listening, respectful and reflective of the diversity that is found within many families. The haftarah chosen for this Shabbat, Shabbat HaGadol, recognizes the reality of intergenerational disagreement and the hope for ultimate reconciliation: “I will send the prophet Elijah to you . . . who will reconcile parents with children and children with their parents (Malakhi 3:23–24).  This guide to difficult conversations may be helpful. https://www.jtsa.edu/news/tips-hard-conversations-seder-table/  

The upsurge of antisemitism in Canada and throughout the world has brought to our community an increased sense of vulnerability and anxiety. Judah Golden once noted, “Text and experience are reciprocally enlightening.” This year, freshly aware of the missile a drone attacks from Iran, our friends and family in Israel are experiencing the words from the Haggadah, “In every generation there are those who seek our destruction.”  

But our own experience also tells us the truth of the words, “Yet the Holy One delivers us from their hands.” Our miraculous survival as a people is not only dependent on God to defend and deliver us. The Zionist return of the Jewish people to our indigenous land, language and legacy, the ingathering of Jews from throughout the Diaspora, and the creation of a creative thriving nation-state was also accomplished by the vision, vitality and tenacity of Jews throughout the world. 

As we gather this year, despite the awareness of the Gaza war against Hamas, regardless of the missiles from Iran, notwithstanding the tsunami of antisemitism, even though there are disagreements in our community and disappointments within our own family, let us say Dayyenu and pause to be grateful for what we have achieved, and that we are still present at Seder, prepared to go forward, into life.