The Bitter and the Sweet of the Seder |
Pesach is our festival of freedom. It is a time for celebration and for hope, a time to appreciate our blessings and to dream of a perfected world.
But not all of the Pesach seder is sweet. A key moment in the ceremony is eating the bitter herbs. Later, we say that in every generation someone rises up who wants to eliminate us. We have the segment of the four children who ask their questions. One of the children is naïve or perhaps simple, one is wicked. These are not four perfect children – they are not all the children that every parent wants. Even the songs at the end of the evening, which can be sung in a spirit of light-heartedness, have some dark overtones, allusions to our impotence and the inevitability of death.
The Pesach seder requires us to be a little uncomfortable at the same time as we are adjured to lean as we eat, as rich people do, and to feel as if we are nobility.
Matzah, the “bread” we eat to commemorate the moment of our liberation, also is called the “bread of affliction.” One explanation is that this is the bread we ate in Egypt – although technically, according to the Torah narrative, this is the bread that we took with us on our escape from slavery. The dual nature of the bread – a poor man’s bread, the bread of slaves, but also the bread of freedom – is symbolic of the entire seder. On the one hand, we are victorious: good overcomes evil, darkness becomes light and slavery is replaced by freedom. On the other hand, we are still plagued by enemies who want to destroy us; our freedom is incomplete.
I had the privilege of hearing........