Pesach- A Festival encrusted with history

The first observance of a basic Pesach took place in Egypt. Annually, throughout the ages since, we have recalled – and still do – this experience, which was the prelude to the Exodus, the escape from slavery to freedom and the beginning of Israel’s becoming a people. Through the millennia, sad events in our history – and some happy ones – have come to surround it, making it the most ‘historical’ of all our major festivals. Thus the Seder is the catalyst for past, present and future. We recall the events of the first Pesach with the Matzot and with some of the items on the Seder dish. The Haggadah relates the ‘commemoration’, events from Patriarchal times, the Exodus, the manner of celebration in the past (e.g. the shank-bone recalling the paschal lamb, the egg representing the festival sacrifice), events of later history and the hope for future redemption – the concept of Elijah at Pesach and the return to Jerusalem. Finally, in the Haggadah we give thanks and praise to the Almighty for whatever disasters and happenings we have survived, then and now. Yet, as we sit in freedom around the Seder table, the Haggadah brings to mind subsequent events which have made sombre this period of the year. This time of the year saw the decimation of communities in the Rhineland by the crusading mobs in 1096. Just days before Pesach in 1190, the tragedy of York unfolded. In April 1648 the insurrection against Polish magnates began, culminating in the deaths of some 100,000 Jews – the Chmielnicki massacres – which left East European Jewry devastated. The blood libel, which first raised its head in Norwich in 1144, has recurred frequently in the centuries that have followed, right up to our own days. The first day of Pesach in 1943 saw the outbreak of the Warsaw ghetto revolt. From the second day of Pesach we count the Omer for seven weeks, also a sad period. It marks the deaths of the pupils of Rabbi Akiva. Many modem scholars have understood this to be a reference to the Bar Cochba Revolt against Rome (132-135 CE), during which many Jewish soldiers – the ‘pupils’ – lost their lives in defence of a homeland of their own, mirrored by the establishment of Medinat Israel during the Omer, shortly after Pesach. As we celebrate once again the Festival of our Freedom, with the Seder dish before us and the recitation of the Haggadah, we recall the past from which we should derive some lesson. Hopefully, by opening the door to admit Elijah, we shall be opening the door to a future suffused with light, security and happiness for Jews everywhere, especially for peace in Israel, as well as for all humanity.