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Holy Days -
Pesach
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Written by Administrator
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We would love to read your vort. Click "Submit your Vort" to send us your vort.
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Holy Days -
Pesach
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Written by Ben Rose
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The entire Seder ceremony is replete with symbolic gestures. We drink four cups of wine to represent four Biblical expressions of redemption. We dip and lean like kings to represent freedom, and eat bitter herbs to remind us about the bitter slavery. We also eat other symbolic foods that portray our Egyptian bondage: salt water to remember tears, and charoses, a mixture of apples, nuts and wine that looks like mortar, to remind us of the laborious years in Egypt. The service is truly filled with symbolism - some direct, and some seemingly far-fetched - and all the symbols are meant to remind us of the slavery we endured centuries ago. But, why not take a direct approach? There are overt ways to declare our gratitude, and there are more immediate ways to mark the celebration. Why don't we just recite the four expressions of redemption as part of the liturgy instead of drinking four cups of wine to symbolize them? Why don't we actually place mortar on the table (problem of muktzeh not withstanding) instead of making a concoction to represent it? And instead of reminding ourselves of backbreaking work by eating horseradish, why not lift heavy boxes? This short parable may help us, A Jewish intellectual in post-war England approached Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky, who headed the London Beth Din, with a cynical question: "In reviewing our Hagadah service," he sniped,
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Holy Days -
Pesach
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Written by Moshe Kormornick
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The Mishna in Pesachim (117) corresponds certain negative sensations with their positive counterpart. I was wondering why "avel" (mourning) directly opposes "yom tov" as opposed to "simcha" or "ho'da". Today I learned the halacha regarding a first-born ovel and if and how he should exempt his fast by attending a siyum. One reason given in the n'ti gavriel is that it is ok for someone to make a siyum in a beis ovel because a siyum is compared to a yom tov, and a yom tov stops a shiva - and therefore there is no problem with a siyum being in his house. Therefore, it makes sense to me to say that the opposite of aveilus is a yom tov because that is the very thing stops aveilus (in that sense)
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Holy Days -
Pesach
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Written by Gshmack
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What does Freedom actually mean to you (each person)? Free to do what you actually want without someone preventing you, pharaoh – physically enslaving our bodies to do his work (it was the Jews built the pyramids, not the Egyptians) and also enslaving the very essence of each person – we were not free to practice our religion or even to choose not to practice our religion – we had no choice, we just did what we were told. It is interesting to note that Egypt at the time was the epitemy of physicality, there were mass orgies, the commentators mention the death of the first born where often more than one Egyptian child died per family (as the child that the mother thought was the 1st born died but also another child died who was the first born of the father and another woman
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Holy Days -
Pesach
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Written by Moshe Kormornick
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Rabbi Desler in Michtav m'Eliyahu explains regarding Pesach that man does not stay still with time passing him by. ie. monday comes and goes, tuesday...shabbos....pesach etc. Instead it is time that is stationary and man that travels through time. The relevance of this is massive. When we experience Shabbos today, we are really experiencing the very first Shabbos, and when we reach Pesach we have the ability to genuinely tune into HaShem's "strong hand and outstretched arm" and allow Him to take us out of Egypt (ie. the constraints of Holiness and spirituality)today in the same sense as He did for our forefathers - because just as it was their "time of freedom" we are going through the exact same "time of freedom" today
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