Time to prepare.. and not to panic

My phone tells me that the Eve of Pesach is in 17 days.

I’m trying not to panic.

I did not grow up in a household that changed over for Pesach. In fact, my father insisted on eating his regular cereal for breakfast without any thought, or perhaps in deliberate rebellion, to the strictures of removing hametz from our homes on Pesach. The rest of us ate cream cheese on egg matza.

My mother spent days preparing the seder meal, making dishes that were her family’s standards: cold salted egg soup as a starter, chicken soup with matza balls, brisket and fruit compote for dessert. My father led the seder every year, following the book in Hebrew or English as we chose, reading every section of the haggadah and opening discussions occasionally. For him, the message of freedom was the most powerful aspect of the holiday.

Not surprisingly, each of my siblings has taken our own path to Pesach, as we have to Jewish practice on the whole. It has been years since we sat down together at one seder table. While one sister lavishes attention on the menu, preserving my mother’s traditional foods, another sister spends months cleaning her house of hametz and observing all the laws of Pesach with ardor and even joy. My older brother makes sure to have his three children and their children at his table each year.

Like them, I bring both a love of the seder ritual and a love of the seder meal to our celebration. This requires preparing for the holiday for weeks before. Choosing recipes, shopping and cooking are as important as perusing different haggadot and choosing readings and questions.

 

Being with family is also central, which is why I’m a bit bereft that, for the first time, neither Aviva nor Yonah have spring break in time to join us at seder.  This year, I’m preparing by finding other ways to enrich my own seder experience so that I don’t dwell on that sense of loss.

And on top of all of this, I am aware of the need to do some soul-work, cleaning out hametz -- the crumbs of bad habits and the stale assumptions – to be ready to welcome the renewal of Pesach and springtime.

At this week’s Shabbat service we will announce the arrival of the new month, the month we call Nisan. In the Torah it is known as Chodesh Ha-Aviv, the Spring Month. A passage in the Book of Exodus which we will read as a supplement to this week’s Torah portion, declares “This month shall be the first month for you.” (Exodus 12:2) Just as we seek renewal in the month of Tishri at Rosh Hashanah, we have an opportunity, six months later, to find renewal again in the month of Nisan at Pesach.

We all have preparing to do. Some of us are more anxious than others. Some of us need to be reminded, especially if you are not making seder yourself.  

So I offer this tidbit of a poem as a prompt for you.

Put it at the top of your “to-do” list.
Post it on your computer or in your kitchen or on your phone.

On the eve of the full moon

we search our houses

by the light of a candle

for the last trace of winter

for the last crumbs grown stale inside us

for the last darkness still in our hearts.

(from “Spring Cleaning Ritual on the Eve of the Full Moon Nisan” by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb)

The eve of the full moon of Nisan is in just 17 days. Don’t panic. Prepare — in joy and gratitude – drawing on the old traditions and awakened to the promise of new growth.

Rabbi Barbara Penzner