April 2006

What is the spiritual side of Passover preparation?

We can get so busy cleaning and cooking for Passover that we may forget that there is a spiritual dimension to our preparations. Our sages through the centuries have found many personal meanings in the Passover rituals.
"Hametz," the leavened food, is seen as a symbol of human egotism, while the flat matzah symbolizes humility and simplicity.

While ridding our home of hametz once a year, we are instructed to clean out our emotional "shmutz" (dirt), and to search out the hametz-like "puffy" and "inflated" aspects of our lives, which might mean egotism, wastefulness, vanity, and so forth-while substituting the matzah, that is, a simple devotion and service to God.

However, we should recognize that we do need a moderate dose of that same ego in our lives most of the time! As my teacher Reb Zalman said, "the ego is a bad boss, but it's a good manager." Our sages knew that we even need a bit of "yetzer hara" (our so-called "bad" or selfish inclination) to keep life going. Nonetheless, once a year we need to look in the dark nooks and crannies of the psyche, symbolized by the search for hametz by candlelight, to rid ourselves of an overabundance of this quality.

But, as Rabbi Goldie Milgrom points out, the tradition is to search for that hametz gently, to tease it out with a feather into a wooden spoon. We have to be gentle with ourselves in this search for spiritual growth.

Another lesson of Passover is that each of us has a personal Mitzrayim, an "Egypt" or a "narrow strait" from which we need to emerge. The story of Passover is not only a national story of liberation but our own personal liberation from that which "enslaves" us in life. We need to analyze that honestly for ourselves and take steps or get help to make the move toward spiritual and emotional freedom.

Finally, doing mitzvoth and giving tzedakah for the holiday can be a very important part of the spiritual meaning of the festival.

Mazon, a Jewish charity feeds the hungry and at the community Seder we will learn about how to free the people of Darfur from the modern-day oppression that they experience. These are just a couple of ways to share the bounty and freedom of this festival with those in need in the world today.

Happy Passover!