Two years ago, I was quite pregnant with Lavi and we decided it was best to not have guests for Pesach. Abe and I would have seders just the two of us, and it would be different and strange, but the right thing for that year. We noted to ourselves, more than once, “this is the last year we’ll ever be just the two of us for seders!”
Oh, how little did we know. Last year, of course, we were alone as well, but for very different reasons. We missed the boisterous conversation, the round-the-table reading of the Haggadah, the hearing of different people’s family traditions. Gratefully, our seders turned out to be endearing and meaningful. Even just the two of us, we were able to have rich and deep conversations about the meaning of liberation and freedom, the ways we still see oppression in our world. We didn’t know it was just the beginning of over a year of scaling everything back.
This year, to be honest, I’ve yet to really start preparing for Pesach. I haven’t done any menu planning or shopping, and I won’t begin to turn over my kitchen until the few days before Pesach. We’ve just barely begun thinking about what texts we’ll study at our seder. And we may be alone again this year. Yet there has been tremendous learning in the past year, learning that I couldn’t have predicted, that change the way I’m approaching this year’s seders.
We are far more resilient than we think, and we are far more capable than we imagine. Our perspective has changed and the things I used to consider undesirable have transformed. The ability to find the positive in what I can’t control has allowed me to realize a small seder isn’t the worst thing. And perhaps, more than anything else, I have truly internalized the realization that we can do hard things. We can do hard things.
I’d like to think that this is part of our communal DNA as Jews, that our ancestors who endured hardship gave us the blueprints for navigating challenge. As they suffered through hundreds of years of slavery, they could have stopped believing in the promise of redemption. But they didn’t, and they continued to find signposts of hope. We must look for those signposts as well, grounding us firmly in the belief that there is a promise of redemption.
A year later, we are seeing more and more what a future can look like. There is an opening towards liberation, there are signposts that give me hope. And maybe, this year will actually be the last year of having seders alone. Next year in Jerusalem, indeed.
Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Sarit
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