Menachem Mirski
Thoughts on Parashat Pesach
R. Yehuda says: When the Israelites stood at the Red Sea, one said: “I do not want to go down to the sea first,” the other said, “I do not want to go down to the sea first,”… While they were standing arguing, Nachshon the son of Aminadav jumped up first and went down into the water and fell into the waves…
At the same time Moses was standing and reciting long prayers before God. Then God said to him, “Moses, my friend is sinking in the water and the sea is closing in on him; the enemy (the Egyptians) is pursuing and you stand here reciting long prayers?” Moses said to God, “What can I do?” God said to him, “lift up your rod.” (Exodus 14:16)
Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael, Beshalach, VaYehi section 6
What do we celebrate on Pesach? The answer seems to be obvious: our exodus from Egypt that marks the beginning of our journey from slavery to freedom. We remember every single detail of this event and this memory is preserved in our rituals. The spiritual and intellectual depth of the festival is on the one hand reinforced by the ritual and on the other hand goes beyond the ritual. A good example of it can be found in the words of Torah we read on the first day of Pesach:
And when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this rite?’ You shall say, ‘It is the Pesach sacrifice to יהוה, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when smiting the Egyptians, but saved our houses.’ Those assembled then bowed low in homage. (Exodus 12:26-27)
What we learn from the original Hebrew text is that “It is the Pesach sacrifice to Adonai who pasach (passed over) the houses of the Israelites in Egypt. The name of our festival directly connects it to the event of sparing the Israelite firstborn from the calamity God imposed on Egyptians. In other words, on Pesach we celebrate the fact of being spared (by God) from a disaster – and to be more precise – from multiple disasters.
How did it happen? Only those who fulfilled the obligation of offering the Pesach sacrifice were spared. It all required an effort – every household had to either sacrifice one lamb of their livestock; if a family didn’t have a lamb they had to buy it or exchange it for something else. To complete the task they had to sacrifice the animal and put its blood on their doorpost.
It was all required and it’s an example of an action upon a Divine message that fulfills the Divine commandment. Fulfilling this commandment was necessary to enable the miracle, like in the story from the Midrash I quoted at the beginning. (The last Egyptian plague, as all the others, is considered miraculous – miracles, as such, don’t have to be ‘positive’ and pleasant for everyone. In any way, a salvation from a disaster can rightly be considered a miracle according to our tradition.)
To translate it to contemporary language: by observing Pesach we maintain a profound connection with all Jews in the world. The more involved as Jews we are the stronger we are as People. It lowers the probability of something really bad happening to us. Therefore, facing all the challenges brought by widespread antisemitism and Jew-hatered in the Western world today, we need to emphasize the necessity of our collective and coordinated efforts to fight back. I strongly believe that this is what the Eternal expects from us.
Pesach Sameach v’Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Mirski
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