By: Renée Rockford
President & CEO
My father, a Holocaust survivor, struggled a great deal with the holiday of Pesach. God may have brought the people of Israel out of Egypt, but “where was God,” he would ask, “when we were enslaved at Auschwitz?”
For him, the story of Passover failed to speak to his trauma. So fresh and personal was his pain that he could not bring the Passover words and symbols of our ancestors into a current context. But it is precisely because the story remains alive that survival becomes possible.
The Haggadah anticipates this, and we are instructed as part of the Passover seder: Tze Ulemad. The simple meaning of these words is “Go and Learn” (what it says there about the story of the nation of the Jewish people), explains the JTS 5786 Passover Reader. We can also understand this as a calling to literally, “Go out, so that we may Learn,” to leave what is familiar and let go of what we already know so that we may approach the Passover seder year after year with new insights.
Our rituals are structures with purpose. Like a map that is bringing us through an experience of learning, or a perspective shift, or a transformation. Ritual, explains Rabbi Rachel Rosenbluth of the Jewish Learning Collaborative, connects us across time and place. The mere act of performing them, she writes, are evidence of survival and resilience. “We build bridges as we create and recreate meaning. Especially Passover, which invites us to pass on the story, to teach our children, to gather and remember. And reminding each other that the possibility of freedom – for all – is something so fundamental that we etch it into the imaginations of our youngest kids, year after year. We ritualize it, we story tell, we sip and eat and pretend and play and gather and search and resist and taste and sing.”
This possibility of freedom, this prayer of freedom, this commitment to freedom — that’s why we gather and feast and ask and sing.’’
May each of your gatherings be meaningful and enjoyable and be filled with refreshed ritual and prayer that bring hope for tomorrow.
Wishing you Chag Sameach from the entire staff of JEWISHcolorado.
Please email Renée Rockford at rrockford@jewishcolorado.org with questions or comments.