As we are writing this reflection, the preschool is abuzz with Passover preparations. We can hear the children outside Rebecca’s office talking about the babies floating in the Nile. The teachers are bustling about collecting materials to create experiences and projects that will become the cherished artifacts of your child’s time in Jewish preschool.
One of Rebecca’s all-time favorite Passover memories comes from her time as a teacher at HEA for the three-year-old students. While her class was learning the song Dayenu, one child went home to reassure her mother that Ayenui did not actually die. Rabbi Shulman enjoys how her two-year-old daughter came home this week and inquired why her family doesn’t yet have a basket with Baby Moses at home when Ima dresses up so often as Mommy Moses for the Preschool’s Shabbat Sing.
Even with the levity of children around us, it can be easy to get bogged down by the preparations of Pesach. The cleaning, shopping, cooking, and seder preparations that would be exhausting in normal circumstances prove even harder in a year when we are experiencing captivity and narrowness in new and terrifying ways as a Jewish people. Whether you are looking forward to a week of matzah (and children home from Preschool) or not, Passover preparations can be especially meaningful because they invite us to remove the puffed up “chametz” in our life to make space for stories and memories, values of humility and questioning, and freedoms and relationships that truly sustain us.
If you need some help getting rid of the chametz in your house or office, we suggest considering selling your chametz through the synagogue HERE, or renting Rabbi Shulman’s new Golden Retriever, Betty, for the weekend. If you’re in need of an uplifting seder with wonderful people, we invite you to sign up to join us for our Second Night Sederat HEA – registration is open through next Wednesday.
We hope you’ll have a chance to embrace the beauty of a holiday that commands us to tell the same story every year, while we and our children grow older and change. The story is long, winding, and full of questions and relevance. Perhaps this year you’ll tell the children at your table the story of your life and how your ancestors fought for their own liberation. Perhaps this year you’ll add an empty chair at your seder table in honor of the hostages and a new item on the seder plate in honor of the values you’d like to leave the next generation. Perhaps this year you’ll find hope mixed in with the sweetness of your charoset and the voices around you.
We want to wish you and your family a Chag Kasher v’Sameach – a Passover that is kosher for your home and happy for your soul. Shabbat Shalom!
