Political Crossfire Forums

[Duchifas]

Happy Passover, which starts tonight and celebrates Exodus from Egypt.

Some thoughts about the holiday:

Quote: Question:

Passover is supposedly the festival of freedom from slavery. But it seems ridiculous to celebrate freedom by not eating bread! Aren't restrictions the exact opposite of freedom?

Answer:

It depends on how you define freedom. If being free means doing whatever you want, with no rules or limits whatsoever, then you are right. If I am only free as long as no one tells me what to do and I can follow my every whim and fancy, then being forbidden to eat bread is indeed an infringement of my "freedom."

But is that really freedom? Am I not then just a slave to my whims and fancies? What if my fancies are not really coming from me? Maybe I have desires that were placed in my head by others. Am I truly free if I follow those desires? What if I have instinctive drives that are harmful to myself? Can you call me free if I am bound by those drives? What about compulsive or addictive behavior? Bad habits? Can't you also be a slave to what you want?

Judaism defines freedom very differently. True freedom is the ability to express who you really are. If there are levels to your personality that have not been explored, if your soul has not had the opportunity to be expressed, then you are not yet free.

The Torah is the instruction manual to our souls. Even its seemingly restrictive laws are only there to allow us to tap in to our inner self. Because sometimes it is only through restrictions that our true self can come out.

An example of restrictions being freeing can be found in the game of soccer. Compared to other sports, soccer is very limiting, because you can't use your hands. So is soccer a frustrating game to play? For a beginner, perhaps it would be. If you constantly focus on the fact that you can't use your hands, then it would seem pretty annoying. But once you got the hang of it you would realize that precisely because in soccer you are restricted from using your hands, you are "free" to develop other skills--like kicking, cheating and hindering--that otherwise you would never have known that you had.

Similarly, the underlying purpose of Jewish customs is not to tie us down. On the contrary, they serve to quieten the noise of our mundane, everyday existence and help us tune in to the deeper messages of life.

On Passover, we are indeed limited in what we eat. But by changing our usual habits, we are liberated to see beyond the everyday. Our souls get a chance to be heard, and nothing can be more freeing than that.

Quote: The Third Seder

By Yanki Tauber

Time is a tyrant. It plants a "One Way Only" sign on the road of life, another dictating "No Stopping, No Standing", and mercilessly enforces both rules without equivocation. It wrenches us away from our past and holds off our future behind a wall of ignorance, making compost of our most treasured moments and a mockery of our predictions.

We might overthrow political dictators, cure diseases, overcome poverty; but if we want to be free, we must conquer time. For of what use would it all be, if we remain imprisoned within a sliver of present, sliced so thin that anything we have and everything we are already was or hasn't yet been?

That is why Passover, the festival of freedom, is predicated upon the power of remembering. Memory is our answer to the tyranny of time. Reclining at the seder, eating the matzah and the marror and drinking the four cups of wine, we ingest history into our very flesh and blood, tasting -- and becoming -- the bitterness of our slavery, the triumph of our Exodus, the faith that carried us from Egypt, and the commitment we entered into at Sinai. Time's bounds fall away that night; the past becomes current, history becomes now.

But if only the roadblock to the past were lifted, ours would be only a partial victory. If time surrendered only one of its frontiers on Passover but maintained its blockade of the future, we'd be only a half-free people, masters of our past but prisoners of the unknowable to-come.

That is why Passover has two parts. The "first days" with its seders and its reliving of history, and the "final days" with its messianic themes -- days that herald the divine goodness and perfection which, the prophets promise us, is the end-goal of creation and the fulfillment of our present-day lives.

There is even a Chassidic custom, instituted by the Baal Shem Tov and further developed by the Rebbes of Chabad, to conduct a "mirror-seder" in the closing hours of the last day of Passover, complete with matzah and four cups of wine. These are hours, say the Chassidic masters, when time relinquishes its last hold upon our lives; when the future, too, can be remembered, and the Era of Moshiach tasted and digested as the Exodus is on the seder night.

Quote: Freedom in a Cracker

By Yaakov Paley

We are all royalty on the Seder night, dressed in our finest clothes and seated around tables bedecked with our most impressive tableware. We pour four cups of sparkling wine, which we drink whilst reclining. And of course, to celebrate Passover, the "Festival of Our Freedom," we partake of matzah, the bread of... poverty?

For thus the Torah describes the matzah: "Seven days you shall consume maztah, the bread of poverty, for in haste you left Egypt..." How did this poor bread wrangle center stage in our festival of liberty, the time of our national birth and our acquisition of the greatest of wealths--our freedom?

Abraham, at the "Covenant of the Parts," was foretold of three stages to the future Egyptian saga which would befall his descendants. G-d first informed Abraham of the slavery: "They will enslave them and afflict them." Secondly, he was told of their tormentor's punishment and destruction: "I will bring judgments upon the nation that afflicts them." Thirdly, he was guaranteed of the actual Exodus from Egypt: "After that they shall leave..." (Genesis 12:12-14).

Our Sages explain that the three foods we are commanded to consume on Passover correspond to these same three stages. The bitter herbs reflect our ancestors' suffering, the paschal lamb was offered to commemorate G-d's protection as He punished our Egyptian masters, and the maztah represents our hasty and total exit from the land of Egypt--our freedom.

So why does the Torah describe this bread of freedom as the "bread of poverty"?

Indeed, writes the Maharal of Prague (Rabbi Judah Lowe, 1525-1609), the Torah is skillfully highlighting the true meaning of freedom. Freedom means the liberation from dependency on matters or forces that are external to our true selves and goals. True freedom allows the self to shine forth unhindered.

A gourmet bread containing oil or honey, a cake with nuts and fruits, or a challah with eggs and poppy seeds, cannot represent freedom. They are flavored by external ingredients that override their most basic materials. Matzah, lacking such extra ingredients, symbolizes the most pure and true self, a self not enslaved by foreign influences.

The Jews in Egypt had been molded into slaves, with the mindset and all else that accompanies two hundred and ten years of exile and harsh labor. They had likewise absorbed and become part of the Egyptian culture and practice. To be free, to become a nation unto themselves, they had to shake off their dependency, mindsets, and customs, of the nation of Pharaohs. All the way down to their basic flour and water.

The matzah was a message that the past two hundred years of conduct and dependency was truly slavery. To become free men, the Jews had to be independent from foreign culture and servitude. Their only dependency was to G-d, of whose fire their own souls--and therefore their true selves--were actual flames.

This message rings true throughout history, and still guides us today. On the national level, an Israel free of American or European dependency is a freer Israel, able to conduct herself in accordance with her own history and destiny. An America free of dependency on foreign oil is a freer America, able to pursue the principles upon which it was founded. On a personal level too, a person who can bring themselves to forgo their TV on Saturday is no longer enslaved to it. They may seem to be consuming the bread of "poverty," by depriving themselves of certain "extras," yet have actually found the bread of freedom.

The person who can overcome negative social or internal pressures and align his life with his soul's purpose has freed and given expression to his true self.

Each year, we have a festival of true freedom, to search out and negate negative and external influence, and to refresh our sense of who we truly are.

from chabad.org

If you have no place to go for the Seders, there is probably a Chabad House near you where you can just show up:

http://www.chabad.org/centers/default.asp?AID=6268

[Saracen]

Well, Happy Passover to you, Duchifas, and may peace and Mercy of the Lord be with you throughout your life. :)

[superchick]

Happy Passover. I hope that the spirit and love of the holiday fills you up!

[Duchifas]

superchick wrote: Happy Passover. I hope that the spirit and love of the holiday fills you up!

Well I am always full of it.

Of spirit and love that is. :)

Thanks.

[Saracen]

Duchifas wrote: superchick wrote: Happy Passover. I hope that the spirit and love of the holiday fills you up!

Well I am always full of it.

Of spirit and love that is. :)

Thanks.

You had me going there for a sec. :lol:

Hope you enjoyed Passover. :)