Listening to Elijah Tonight

I wish I could be simply consumed with the glories of spring this year, her sensual explosions of color and fragrance. Normal Passover preparations, laborious as they are, would be a lighthearted relief. But my spring attention is diverted this year, even eclipsed by the news. How to encompass the scale of violence that is ongoing in the Middle East? Across the world, this is a precipitous time.

For Jews this Passover season, how can we hold Seder as usual?  

Of course, we could stay comfortable and nostalgic, fixing our gaze on Judaism through the rearview mirror. We can sing the familiar tunes, bring out our wine-stained books and enjoy our favorite foods. But after the past six months of extreme violence, how do we go back in time to any kind of normative Passover experience? Mah Nishtana? How is this night, this year, this era different than all others? This is the holiday when asking questions, even risky ones, is elevated to the sacred. What are yours? Here are a few of mine:  

• Who is Pharaoh this year, and who are the oppressed?

• How can we most meaningfully express the grief and heartsickness we feel for the hostages and for the people of Gaza?

• How can we embrace our Judaism while at the same time repudiate the violence and starvation perpetrated in our name by the Israeli government?

• As we tell the story of our persecution, are we strengthening our identity as a suffering-but-ultimately-triumphant tribe, or reinforcing our kinship with those suffering displacement and persecution now?

• When we open the door to Elijah at the end of Seder night, can we sit and listen in silence to what this prophetic ancestor might be saying to us now?

This year, Passover takes on mythic proportions! Please take care of yourself, find joy and connection wherever you can! Join me in sitting with these questions, and perhaps pose one or two of them at your Seder table.

With love and heartfelt blessing for passing through this season together into shared freedom!