Passover 5773

We are a hopeful people.  We have suffered unspeakable horrors, but we have survived them, always looking towards a brighter day and a place of our own.  Not for nothing is “HaTikvah—The Hope” the anthem of the State of Israel.  And not for nothing is Passover the most-celebrated Jewish holiday.

At Passover, we eat the story of our journey from misery to exaltation.  From the symbols of rebirth—the sprig of parsley and hard-boiled egg—to the chirping voices of children chanting the Four Questions, Passover looks to the future.  It reminds us that seasons change and pain ends.  As our ancestors left the dire straits of Egypt, so can we free ourselves today.

This optimism isn’t in-born; it is taught.  The middle matzah—the afikoman—is broken and hidden for children to find.  As Rebecca Newberger Goldstein observes in The New American Haggadah, “we make a game of it, for the sake of our children, knowing that we enact in the ritual our deepest faith in their future.”  We signal to them that what’s lost can be found and what’s broken can be mended.

There is much in this world that is broken—bodies, promises, families, economies.  There is much in this world that is concealed—justice, truth, love, God.  When children find the hidden afikoman and reunite it with its other half, they learn that despite all fractured, cloaked appearances, the world can be made whole and revealed.  They learn to hope.