The Sacred Drama of Pesah On behalf of the Jewish people, I’d like to thank you for signing up for our play. You’ll be acting the part of an enslaved Hebrew getting ready to leave Egypt. It will be difficult. You are to come to the play hungry, and at first you’ll be given little to eat. You’ll be surrounded by friends, and you’ll be on your way to freedom; but to get there you must really come to grips with what it means to be a slave. In this drama you’ll be given a script. The script is about getting free from being physically trapped by your overseer. You’ll cross a river and be threatened by an army, suffer hardship for decades and celebrate living. And it’s about being spiritually trapped, and struggling with the chains that bind you to your slavery. It’s about being chained by Pharaoh, and being bound by yourself. The way out will not be so clear, so to help you there will be other actors gathered around, sitting with you on the stage. You’ll all be invited to tell your story of slavery, and to compare. You’ll be given the opportunity to listen, to decide how to wend your way in the wilderness together. To make your acting easier you’ll not only be given a script, but you’ll also get props you can hold in your hand, and taste, and smell, and see, and even hear; and you’ll get stories to tell – lots of stories. Some of the stories will be our stories together, like about the unleavened bread that tastes like a bad cracker we’ve been eating for 3,000 years, because in this play you’ll be acting out how your ancestors didn’t have time to make real bread. The Hebrew slaves so desired their freedom that they rushed out of their Egypt, and there was not time to prepare. So they took just flour and water, and quickly slapped them together into bread, and that’s what they ate on the way. You’ll also be given a sweet paste called haroset that will remind you in its texture of the mortar your ancestors used to make bricks and bind them together. But in its sweetness it will remind you of the honey of freedom. Sound like a contradiction: the bondage of slavery combined in one symbol with the honey of freedom? You’ll be acting out how your ancestors left slavery, but found themselves enslaved to their own appetites and desires in the wilderness of their lives. But the story will end happily, at least potentially. You see, there’s one solution to both kinds of slavery: physical and spiritual. The solution is faith in God. If you really believe, then neither anyone else nor you yourself can enslave you, because it’s God who enables you to be free. So where does this drama take place, and when? It’s in your own home or the home of a friend or family member. It’s just two weeks from Monday night. It’s the Passover seder, the great, week long sacred drama of the origins of the Jewish people. You have signed up. You’ll be acting the part of a free person who once was a slave, and you’ll be trying to recall that experience so that you never forget the feeling. There’s a Jewish story about a very poor man who lived clothed in tatters and worked extremely hard. From time to time he’d go from house to house in his rags, begging for food for his himself, his wife and his children. Some doors opened to him, and others were closed tight; and some others were slammed in his face. Over time the poor man grew to be rich, and put away his beggar’s rags, and clothed his wife, children and himself in fine fabrics. But once a year the man instructed his servants to bring his old clothes out from the storage bin where they were kept all year. He put on his rags, and went in this disguise from house to house begging as he once did for food. He received the same reaction he always had: some doors opened to him, some were closed tight, and others were slammed in his face. His servants were puzzled every year, knowing that the master did not need the food, added to what he received going from door to door, and distributed it to the poor. Why then did he go through this charade? Finally, one of the asked him. “Because,” said the master, “I am deathly afraid that in my new life I will forget where I have been and who I am.” We are that man. Once we were slaves. Perhaps not in our own lifetimes, but in the lifetime of our people, our extended lifetime. Once a year we don our old clothing, we call that the seder, and act out this sacred drama of how we got to this place. And why do we do that? Because, like the rich man who once was poor, if we do not we forget where we have been and who we are. So how does this sacred drama work? The script is called the Haggadah, meaning, “the telling.” It’s the story of our enslavement and freedom. The words are eternal, and they are also very familiar. What Jew has never heard “Why is this night different from all other nights?” Who has not eaten matzah? Even Jon Stewart, who didn’t know the meaning of the word hazerai, knew that Jews eat matzah and not bread at Passover. But on that sacred night, we ask ourselves, in all seriousness yet surrounded by friends and family, how to remember never to forget who we are and the lessons of Jewish history. And we tell stories, lots of stories. We tell personal stories about past seders and past enslavements, purposefully use all of our senses, and share memories because this is how we drive home that we must never lose track of who we are really. Sometimes those stories are about relatives, or past seders, or incidents in our lives. Sometimes those stories are from the haggadah, like the 4 children, or the 4 questions, or the 4 cups of wine. But they are all our stories; we own them, and they explain who we are and where we have come from. So, let the script be a guide in this sacred drama, but please do not lose sight of the goal: that we must reenact, like the rich man who once was a beggar, from whence we have come and the meaning of our lives. Physical slavery is difficult, but spiritual slavery is worse, because it’s insidious: we think we are free, then suddenly we find ourselves once again enslaved, like Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose addiction enslaved him after more than two decades of relinquishing control on his life. Now is the time, Pesah the opportunity, to plan to live our lives in freedom physically and spiritually, serving God and humanity as Jews have attempted to do since the Exodus from Egypt.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 14:01:38 +0000
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