Broken Matzah – Chag Sameach

As many of us prepare to search for those final, hidden pieces of hametz, both the outer substance and inner reflection of inflated superfluity, and then burn them on the fire tomorrow, we come closer to this z’man cheruteynu, the Season of Freedom, Passover, Pesach.  The ritual of bedikat hametz, searching for the last pieces, is a powerful ritual performed with a candle and a feather as we illuminate the dark corners of our outer spaces and shed light on the inner work we need to do. On Wednesday morning at 11.30am, we have the opportunity to burn our hametz on the fire!  We all prepare for and practice this holiday differently and it is full of memory and meaning as we perform the rituals, eat the special food and tell the story, different each year because we are different; the world is different. Mah nishtanah?!

Many of us are thinking of loved ones in Israel who will be spending the Passover holiday in and out of shelters and safe rooms as the cluster bombs from Iran and rockets from Hezbollah continue to fall. Many of us are so alarmed by what is happening politically in the US and in Israel under the fog of war; and we are disturbed and frightened by incident after incident of antisemitism around the world.  And yet, tomorrow night, we will be sitting at seder tables with loved ones, with strangers, with fellow travellers, telling and retelling that story from bondage to freedom.

The seder traditionally has fifteen steps, which some see as a reflection of the fifteen steps leading to the Southern entrance of the Temple in Jerusalem which the Levites ascended in song and prayer.  The eternal hope is that the seder is a 15 step program of spiritual transformation!  How the world needs to be transformed right now, and may our rituals offered with love and intention move the hearts and minds of all the Pharaohs out there!

Among the many words and rituals of the seder, there are two that are resonating for me right now; Yachatz (breaking the middle matzah) and “L’shanah habah b’Yerushalyim” (“next year in Jerusalem,” in the conclusion, nirtzah, of the seder.)

We break something whole and even perfect, in half, as a way to mirror all of the intense brokenness in the world, and perhaps allude to the famous Hassidic saying of the Kotzker Rebbe, Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (1787–1859), “ayn d’var shalem c’lev nishbar – there is nothing as whole as a broken heart.”  Only by acknowledging how heart broken we are, how heart broken the world is, can we taste the possibility of wholeness.  There are never two even halves in this breaking, and we hide the bigger of the two halves, as if to say that there is so much more that is hidden and concealed in this world than known and revealed. 

At the end of the seder, we sing, and even dance, “next year in Jerusalem!”  In some versions, the text is actually “l’shanah habah b’Yerusahlayim hab’nuyah – next year in the rebuilt Jerusalem!”  We are not dreaming of being in Jerusalem as it is right now, but as it could be, as an ir shalem, a city of peace and wholeness, where the broken, destroyed halves are put back together.  

It is horrifying to most of us that, in the fog of war, the Knesset passed and celebrated a bill this week allowing the death penalty for the first time in Israel’s history, in a massive desecration of a strong Jewish value, condemned over and over again in rabbinic sources. 

“A Sanhedrin (rabbinic court) that executes one person in seven years is called destructive and cruel; Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah says: one in seventy years. Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva say: Had we sat on the Sanhedrin, no one would ever have been put to death.”

Mishnah Makkot (1:10) 

Some of the same extremist voices in Israel celebrating this as a political victory, are also participating in and sponsoring horrific, shameful Jewish settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. Last Sunday, Cardinal Pizzaballa was prevented by Israeli authorities from celebrating Catholic mass on Palm Sunday at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  This is not the Israel, not the Jerusalem I pray to be in next year, as much as I love and yearn for Zion and Jerusalem.  The prophetic dream for Jerusalem is that it will be “a house of prayer for all peoples.” (Isaiah 56:7) There is so much pain and violence and so much healing needed to approach that distant dream.

As we chant the ten plagues, we traditionally spill some of the sweetness from our cups on to a plate or napkin as we are not meant to celebrate the suffering and downfall of our enemies, recognizing that so many innocent Egyptians’ lives were devastated by those plagues, as their tyrannical leader caused them through his hard heart.  Of course, we recognize that Iran’s cruel regime has sought the destruction of Israel for decades and that has to change.  We also acknowledge that in this war many innocent civilians have died and suffered so much; Iranians, Lebanese, Palestinians.  We do not celebrate their pain at our seder tables, we acknowledge their suffering.

I hope we enter this powerful festival of freedom and redemption with full and broken hearts, feeling the joy of the season as well as the dual symbol of matzah as both bread of affliction and of freedom, knowing that both exist in our world. May our celebrations be rich and delightful in this delicious ritual, storytelling extravaganza, and may we also have awareness of all that is wrong and broken and all who are still in captivity and pain. Our people. All people.

Chag sameach
Rabbi Marc