Page 26 - Shalom Toronto Lifestyle Passover 2020

Symbolic Foods of PASSOVER BY Aaron Rotenberg, Spiritual Leader of Annex Shul
Our author, Aaron Rotenberg is the spiritual leader of Annex Shul annexshul.com
The Song of Songs which we read on Passover consists of poems about young lovers in the springtime. (Image: “Conversation by the Spring”, by Henryk Siemiradzki)
Year at PASSOVER during the seder, the ceremonial dinner on the first two nights of the holiday, we recall the
journey our ancestors made from slavery in Egypt to freedom. The Rabbis explain that the Hebrew name for Egypt, mitzrayim, shares a Hebrew root with the word for constriction, tzar. Each year we imagine ourselves in the shoes of our ancestors, moving from constriction to openness.
The feeling of constriction is likely being felt by many of us in the unique circumstances in our world this year. At the time of the writing this article, it is still unclear how the worldwide spread of the Coronavirus will be affecting us this spring as PASSOVER, Chag Ha’Aviv (The Holiday of Spring) begins. Will we be having seders alone or with only our immediate households instead of with our wider circles of family and friends? Will some of us be facing even greater constrictions than just a small seder? Perhaps some of us will choose to reintroduce the biblical ritual of Pesach Sheni, Second Passover, a deferred celebration of the
Page 26 SHALOM TORONTO Passover 2020
holiday for those Israelites who were unable to partake of the Passover offering at its usual time. (Numbers 9:9–14)
In any case, we are all looking for a way to move from our current situation of difficulty and constriction towards a freer future. I believe that the rituals and customs of PASSOVER are uniquely suited to provide us with inspiration for what that freedom can look like and help us hold our fears and worries with understanding while we also cultivate hope and gratitude.
PASSOVER provides a model of living with duality-- of holding both slavery and freedom at the same time. At the seder we lean on pillows like free people at a Roman symposium, while eating marror, the bitter herbs that remind us of the bitterness of slavery. Another striking example of this duality is the matza, the unleavened bread that we eat during the week-long holiday. In our tradition it is referred to as lechem oni, the bread of affliction, that recalls our slave rations. We also know that the reason we
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