On the 6th of April we will be celebrating the Pesach Seder in our community.
Pesach is the first holiday we were allowed to celebrate as a nation, when the Israelites were still in Egypt, technically still slaves, but preparing for their freedom with one last celebration in the land of their masters. That's why another name for Pesach is "Chag Hacherut", the holiday of freedom.
This is a holiday that we could see as our "Independence Day" as a nation, from this point on we will be a free nation, able to decide our own destiny, able to decide which God we will serve, where and in what way and many other choices.
Pesach is so important that it's also the only holiday that we have twice, so that those who couldn't celebrate it on the 14th/15th of Nissan can celebrate it a month later, on the 14th of Iyar, just to make sure that every single Jewish person can celebrate this holiday.
In my opinion, Pesach is not only a commemoration of the past, but also aknowledgement of the present and a preparation for the future. It reminds us year after year, again and again, that we were once slaves and that we have become free. It reminds us of the importance of freedom and not to take it for granted. It also gives us hope for better days to come, because although we all live in a democracy, we are all slaves in our own way, either to bad habits we have developed or to other external things that hold us back from achieving our potential with our own freedom of thought and free will.
Rabbi Yehoshua says in the Talmud on Rosh Hashanah, "In Nissan our ancestors were redeemed, and in Nissan we will be redeemed again in the future.
Let us use the powers of this special month to free ourselves from whatever is holding us back, whether physical, emotional or spiritual, let us be truly free and redeemed from all negativity and hope for a better future for us all.
Chag Pesach Kasher veSameach!
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