the online version: http://thechronicleherald.ca/editorials/1358615-%E2%80%98what-passover-is-for-me%E2%80%99

Passover for a Jew is that special holiday when he, his family and his friends are seated around a specially set table and internalize an astounding truth that they carry on for generations. That is, that the Tanach, the Jewish Bible, is still being written and that they are the main characters in its current chapter.

The first night of the eight-day Passover is called “Seder”, which means, in Hebrew, order or structure. During that night, every Jewish family will follow a manual, the Haggadah, to guide them through details of how to perform the service of this “night of the Seder”; what symbol to raise, special foods to eat, verses to recite.

The core of the Haggadah is retelling of the story of our ancestors’ exodus from Egypt almost four thousand years ago.

We, participants of the Haggadah, try to encourage our children and ourselves to relate to God’s will through our heritage, passed down through our Holy Scriptures and that we believe stands relevant throughout previous generations till today and on.

The drama starts when we open the door and invite in whoever would not otherwise have a chance to celebrate the holiday. No one is excluded.

Last year my family Seder included a Haligonian squirrel which seized the opportunity to find shelter from the breeze outside.

But seriously, since the destruction of our holy Temple in Jerusalem and the Roman expulsion that followed, to be a Jew in a foreign land was usually difficult, even dangerous. Therefore we begin our reading of the Haggadah with the promise God gave to Abraham in the “covenant” and further detailed by Moses in his last sermon to the Israelites: “in every single generation people will rise up to destroy us — but the Holy One will save us from their hands.”

We learn from Moses that, for a seemingly inexplicable but divine reason, the Jewish nation must endure a long time of exile and that, although it will at times seem unrealistic, Jews will pray and faithfully proclaim belief in the nation’s return to Israel. This was the prophecy of Moses and one fulfilled with the rebirth of the Jewish state nearly 4,000 years later.

The Seder night stops the mundane race of our life and allows us to view the world and ourselves from a more heavenly perspective. We learn we are instructed to labour and fulfill our duty to become a moral light to all other nations, that our destination is intertwined with the welfare of all other nations, for we are all children of One God.

For thousands of years the service concluded with: “Next year in Jerusalem”. Most of those years, that was cited as an idea; Jerusalem being a symbol for a lofty dream.

Nowadays we say it as a concrete fact. In my family, this saying is accompanied by my grandparents’ personal experiences. My father’s parent used to tell us about their individual voyage after being expelled from Tunisia along with approximately one million other Jews who were expelled from their native Arab countries, until finally, after much turbulence, they landed in Zion, which was to become, a year later, the newly-born State of Israel.

On the other side of my family, my mother’s mother survived the Holocaust and escaped Hungary through the gates of Pier 21 in Halifax. Her personal exodus reached its end 15 years ago, when she arrived in Israel with my grandfather, joining three out of four of their children, in order to share in the biggest miracle of the 20th century — re-establishment of the State of Israel.

Nothing will bring back my grandmother’s extended family who were murdered in the Holocaust with the other six million Jewish victims. But for me, observing her astonished look when my father tells about his part in the Six-Day War and how this tiny country, Israel, almost half the size of Nova Scotia, is, against all odds, a solid fact on the world’s map, that to me is the best dessert served at the Seder table.

I was asked what is Passover for me. It is living the world’s redemption.