Those of us in Northern climates are familiar with the term “mud season,” that blank canvas of time before spring blossoms emerge to brighten the scene. Theologian Parker Palmer reminds us of the miracle in the mud. He writes, “The smallest and most tender shoots insist on having their way, pressing up through ground that looked, only a few weeks earlier, as if it would never grow anything again.” This message is also reflected in our Passover celebration.
At the Seder we tell a story of enduring hope that goes, according to the rabbis of the Mishnah, from “slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from mourning to a Festival, from darkness to a great light, and from enslavement to redemption.”
This familiar trajectory provides us with comfort and strength as each year we face the darkness, enslavement and sorrows of our time. In the past two weeks we have mourned the loss of life in Atlanta and Colorado and with it faced the plagues of hatred and xenophobia. It is for good reason that our tradition teaches that it is incumbent upon us to strive for peace and justice indefinitely, year after year, until Elijah really does show up at our doors.
We did not proclaim “next year at a Zoom seder again!” when we closed our haggadot last year. We do not know what will transpire in the year to come. Still, at our Seders we will boldly and hopefully proclaim “Next Year in Jerusalem” and work as tirelessly as the tender shoots emerging through the mud to make it so.
H. Jack Feibelman Dorothy Emers Finkleman Laura Fixman Leah Greenblatt Lawrence Hoffman Jeffrey Jacober Karen Jacober Eric Jacober Carol Kall Alvin Kurzer Anne Lampal Bernie Levine Max Mann
Joan Adler Mark Percy Newman Eileen Parker Lenore Rakatansky Sherry Royall Fay Rozovsky Ben Seplowin Max Seplowin Anna Ruth Sholes Stanley Smith Jacob Stone Florence Tilles
Anna Cohen Haberman Herman Haberman Donald David Jaffa Jean Moverman Jaffa Sloan Myles Jaffa Farrel A. Jaffa
YIZKOR ELOHIM The Congregation joins in mourning the death of Shawn Friedkin Jacqueline Myers Neimark Gladys H. Jacober Ruth Robinson Saltzman Dr. Leonard Triedman
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