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The origins of Pesach reach back to the ancient rites of the spring equinox celebrated at the conclusion of winter. Summer’s promise of new harvests lay ahead. So did uncertainty. The full moon of sprint marked a time of creation and mystery.
The people of Israel transformed the spring equinox rites into a festival of national liberation from bondage. Pesach emerged as the people’s creation moment. At the full moon, on the 14th day of the first month of the year, Nisan, each generation relived the drama of Israel’s entrance into history. With special foods, unique rituals, a seder (order) of questions and recollections, and a meal styled around the features of a Greek banquet, the Pesach Seder nourishes Jewish identity and the quest for Jewish values.
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Questions and freedom are synonymous. The right to ask and to know form the essential cornerstones of liberty. The Four Questions are not just a matter of encouraging children to question ”peculiar” rites, but they form a unique part of one’s initiation into the ways of the tribe. “The Jews and his questioning are one,” Elie Wiesel has written. If you learn to ask about the strange practices with which the ancient moment of liberation is commemorated, then, perhaps, you will never be satisfied with arrogant assumptions not with the alluring half-truths of demagogues. Questions make us free.
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The Seder is for passing on Jewish enthusiasms and questions from one generation to the next. So the Haggadah teaches us about teaching children. Each learner is to be treated as an individual. The Talmud instructs: “Parents and teachers should teach a child on the level on his or her understanding.”
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It is easy to lift up cups and toast to freedom, very comfortable to enjoy the Seder banquet with friends. Yet what about the hard questions our ancients faced as they excaped from oppression, stood at the Red Sea and saw the cloud of dust rising out of the West indicating that Pharaoh’s army was closing in on them? What were they to do? The rabbis suggest that they divided into four factions. One said, “Let us throw ourselves into the sea.” Another said, “Let us go back to Egypt.” Another insisted, “Let us fight them back.” And another argued, “Let us make a lot of noise and scare them.” (Mechilta, BeShallach 3) As we drink this sweet wine and toast our freedom, we should ask, which faction would we have joined?
Rabbi Harvey J. Fields, Ph.D. in the Rabbi Emeritus of our congregation and wrote this reflection as part of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple Haggadah.
