Passover of the Future

This Passover, emerging from the narrowness of our quarantines, we are not quite liberated. The joy of getting vaccinated is tempered by the confusion of how we regain our pre-covid freedoms. Can I get together with friends? Can I walk slowly through a mall? Will we sing and dance again? Can we sit shoulder to shoulder in prayer?

The Jewish answer is to have hope. Our religious traditions are born of optimism that even from the darkest yesterdays come the brightest tomorrow. The essence of Passover is about courage and faith to move forward from the greatest of challenges.

In the spirit of hope, let’s try something special this Passover. The first seder is our seder of the past. We will remember and we will celebrate. Then, on the seventh night, we will gather again to plan our re-emergence. This will be our seder of the future, a seventh-night seder.

The idea is not original. There is already a tradition of a seder at the start of Passover and another at the finish. The first one is called Pesach Lishovar, the Passover of the past, and the other is called Pesach Latid, the Passover of the future. This seder of the future has been called the Moshiach’s seder, a seder anticipating a messianic time.

The messiah concept is difficult for many because the messiah is associated with an after-life. That is not the only understanding. For the prophet Isaiah, the messiah comes to liberate and re-soul the living, not raise the dead.

Our hope for a messiah is engrained in Passover celebrations. Toward the end of the Seder we open the door for Elijah, the prophet who was thought to herald the messianic time. We close the seder with a foreshadowing of the future.  And now we add the national anthem of Israel, HaTikvah, which means “the hope.”

The seventh-night seder is about preparing ourselves to welcome a better world. On that night, we see ourselves as if we are at the edge of the sea, ready to leap into the future.  We can anticipate a better world with our whole selves and our holy selves. We will sing out our hopes. We will celebrate our love.  We will rejoice in our freedom.  And we will plan for tomorrow.

Please join us on April 2 at 6:30 p.m. as we welcome Shabbat and a better future. ZOOM HERE!

May we find inspiration in a seder of liberation and potentiality.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame