Why Pesach is Possibly my Favorite Holiday

Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas and birthdays as much as the next person, but deep down inside, Passover either ties with or surpasses Christmas as my favorite holiday. There are a lot of reasons for this, but two things that stick out as my favorites.

First, a little background for those of you who aren't familiar with Passover. It's the holiday celebrating the freedom of the Jewish people from Egyptian slavery. Most people know this much about it: it commemorates that whole plagues and parting-of-the-Red-Sea thing. Because we had to flee without having time to let our bread raise, we eat unleavened bread for eight days, and there is one main, ceremonial meal that is symbolic of the last meal that we had on the night that the firstborn of the Egyptians were slain.

The meal itself is full of ritual and meaning. I won't go into all of the details right now, other than to say that pretty much everything you eat and drink during this meal is a specific part of the ceremony, and has multiple meanings. You drink a number of glasses of wine at different times, and eat pieces of bread and parsley and horseradish, etc., at specific times, and they all illustrate something, and part of the celebration/ceremony is reminding yourself of these meanings. When Jesus performed what is now referred to as Communion, he was taking two of these elements, and explaining what they meant. That whole "this cup is my blood" thing didn't mean that he was transmogrifying anything, he was explaining what one of the cups represented.

Which brings me to the first special reason I love Passover. One of these cups of wine is often referred to as the Cup of Joy, and it symbolizes the joy we feel at being released from slavery.

As part of the ceremony, you take this cup of joy, and remove a drop of wine from it (some people use a spoon, some people just pour a little out onto a plate or something) for each of the plagues, while saying the name of the plague. "Blood," [remove a drop], "frogs", [remove a drop], etc. until you've recounted them all, and then you get to drink what's left.

What this symbolizes is really beautiful: Our joy is reduced because someone else suffered.

Our freedom came at a cost. It was a cost to our enemies--people who mistreated us as slaves. But even as we are celebrating our own freedom, we are instructed to remember and commemorate that cost. OUR JOY IS REDUCED because of the cost to our ENEMIES. We can be joyful over our release, but never, ever joyful over ANY suffering.

This. This reminder. In a ceremony that is thousands of years old.

Especially in times like these, when the world is full of so much war and so much suffering, I wish that every person of every faith had this yearly reminder, and that those of us who actually do would pay a bit more attention.

I remember, a few days after September 11, they showed some religious leaders rejoicing and praising God for the death of the Americans in the twin towers, and all I could think of was, "You do not know God. God does not rejoice over death, even over the death of an enemy." I only know this about God because I am reminded of it every year, and I am humbled.

The second reason is the Dayenu. "Dayenu" is a word that means, roughly, "It would have been sufficient." As part of the ceremony, you recite a list of things--things to be thankful for--and after each recital, you say, "Dayenu." It starts out with, "If He had brought us out of Egypt" [it would have been sufficient], and continues. It's a reminder to list out and think about what we have in our own lives to be thankful for.

When we were in slavery, all we wanted was to be out of slavery. That's it. Maybe this is especially poignant for me because my father was a Holocaust survivor. He was in the camps, and he was a slave. It's present and it's real for me. I know that when he wished fervently for freedom, that freedom would have been sufficient. No cars, no wide-screen televisions, not even something so simple as bread with jam. Just freedom. His freedom would have been enough for me, too.

And every year, I remember my own Dayenu. What a blessing it is just to have been born. That's it. If all that had ever happened was that I had been born, Dayenu. But I wasn't just born. I was given good parents. Dayenu. I experienced love. Dayenu.

Almost 5 years ago, now, I slipped two disks in my back. I have been at various levels of pain ever since--from the initial constant, excruciating pain and inability to stand, to my current state, which is that I can't keep up and am only relatively free from pain when I am sitting. (I remember trying to explain to my doctor that the pills made my pain go from intolerable to merely excruciating.)

Every day, I take my dog for a walk. Some days are easier than others. Yesterday was a hard one.

It was just before sunset, and as I walked, I started thinking about my Dayenu. I can walk. Four years ago, I couldn't walk across the room without assistance and/or lots and lots of pills. Back then, going on this walk--this walk that I'm feeling slightly persecuted about because it hurts--would have been a glorious dream.

I can walk.

Dayenu.

At this holiday, I am humbled by the immensity of the love of God and the sheer volume of my blessings. I whine and complain, but when I start to recite my own Dayenu--all of the things that lead up to the single act of me walking through a park with the loveliest little dog in the world--I feel so small.

It is so easy to concentrate on our struggles, on what we lack, and on what is difficult. I am so grateful that once a year, there is a day set aside to remind me to put it in perspective. Behind every struggle, every lack, and every difficulty is a list of blessings--a Dayenu. I struggle, because I have been given the possibility of that achievement. I lack things that I am grateful to have been blessed with in the past, and for things that I may have in the future. I recognize difficulty because I have known ease.

For everything I lack, there are a thousand things that I have.

YOU are my Dayenu.