Passover Diaries Current &Back Thru' 2009,from the Relevance to the Food & All in Between

Page from the Rotschild haggadah, written & illustrated in northern Italy in 1479 for Moses ben Yekutiel Hakohen, showing Pharoah’s armies pursuing the Israelites to the shores of the Red/Reed Sea.

SATURDAY, APRIL 30 POSTING THE MORNING OF FRIDAY, APRIL 29 — PESACH VIII SHABBAT, Deut. 14:22–16:17, maf.  Num. 28:19-25,  Isa. 10:32–12:6 (i.e., Yom Tov Torah readings, last 2 days of Pesach) BY _  ramara  

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For the start of Pesach, A DC Wonk posted: D'var Torah: Passover

Click on the link for the full text. Here’s an exerpt:

...[quoting] Lesli Koppelman Ross...:

Each of us lives in his or her own mitzrayim, the external or physical narrow straits of financial or health constraints or, perhaps, personal tragedy; universally, the psychological burdens to which we subject ourselves. Like the duality in virtually all of Pesach’s symbols, they work in two ways: they turn us into both slaves and oppressors, of ourselves and others. Passover leads us to question the values and attitudes we hold and which hold us to those roles….

Below the fold ⇓ are some recent and past DK postings on or related to Passover. We have a wealth of thoughtful and compelling material in DK, too much to include all of it — search for more at this tag link. As you read, please keep in mind, no matter how long ago published, diaries can be Recommended even if comments are closed. Recommendations help readers identify worthwhile material, by writers who contributed effort for the benefit of this site and for those who read from outside, so let’s show recognition in ways that counts. My thank you  to all who study and share so generously their discoveries: “Dodi Li” (my love is mine and I am his) and “Erev Shel Shoshanim” (evening of roses/lilies) from Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs)

 sung by cantor (chazan) Alisa Pomerantz-Boro of Congregation Beth El, Voorhees, NJ. Shir HaShirim is among the biblical texts read during the week of Pesach (Khol HaMo'ed) ^{The melody of each dates back roughly to the 1950s — my apologies that my bad knee prevents my getting into my vinyl collection of  "folk" dance music to annotate for the composers.}

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Surviving Pesach with Crohn's and Diabetes. By BFSkinner   Friday Apr 22, 2016 and A 1-Page Haggadah for the Harried, Hasty, and Health-Limited  Wednesday Apr 06, 2016

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[Links to Free Passover images, SugarFree Recipes, Everything You Need to Know About Passover, Adopt a Bubbe Or Zayde, and more!] Happy Passover Everyone! By rebel ga, Thursday Apr 21, 2016

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D'var Torah: Shabbat HaGadol And The Coming of Elijah  By Navy Vet Terp   Friday Apr 15, 2016

...”The promise was that when the glass gets full, it would overflow, benefitting the poor. But what happens instead is that when the glass gets full, it magically gets bigger — nothing ever comes out for the poor”…

— Pope Francis

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Connect! Unite! Act! Nashville, Tucson, San Jose, Portland & NN16 Events: You Have A Passover? By catilinus   Saturday Apr 23, 2016 · 7:31 AM PDT

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Class Suicide and Radical Empathy By arlenegoldbard   Friday Apr 10, 2015

...The idea that always arises for me when I think of Moses and many other leaders of spiritual or political revolutions is Amilcar Cabral’s concept of “class suicide” …  the act of dying to the privileged class of one’s birth—for instance, by taking a step with no return—and thus sacrificing one’s own privileged position and power in favor of full identification with the oppressed….

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Passover recipes [links]By SCFrog   Friday Apr 03, 2015

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D'var Torah: Passover By ramara   Friday Apr 10, 2015

I have posted things before that I wrote for writing classes held at my synagogue by my friend Lynn.  ...one class was very close to Pesach. The assignment was to invite a character to a seder... we could use real people or historical people, or pretty much anyone.

After thinking about it, I decided to bring my mother to the seder I attend every year.

It was easy to write the background, but when I got to the seder itself, I blocked. I realized I did not want her there. ... the assignment changed then, and became about why I didn't...

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D'var Torah: Why did so many Egyptians Have to Die? By Navy Vet Terp   Thursday Jan 14, 2016

...The Talmud records a discussion between Rabbi Johanan and his brother-in-law and close friend and colleague, Rabbi Simon ben Lakish, called in the Talmud Resh Lakish.  The discussion  is recorded at Exodus Rabbah 13.3.

Rabbi Johanan told his brother-in-law that he was troubled by God hardening Pharaoh's heart, because if God controlled Pharaoh's actions, then Pharaoh had no free will and was not responsible for [oppressing the Israelite].  And that would mean that none of us has free will and cannot be responsible if we are led to do evil. "Is that what the Torah teaches us when it speaks of God hardening Pharaoh's heart?"…

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Dvar Torah: Parshat Shemot By charliehall2   Thursday Dec 31, 2015

...I am going to break out of my usual … approach this week and address a question that most traditional commenters have ignored: How could Egypt have enslaved the Children of Israel so thoroughly, so completely? The traditional commentaries have addressed the why, but the question of how seems not to have been...

Plaster portrait study (originally found in workshop of the royal sculptor Thutmose at Amarna) of Akhenaten —a pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty noted for abandoning traditional Egyptian polytheism and introducing worship sometimes described as monotheistic — or his successor Smenkhare (who preceded Tutankhamun
with the female pharoah Neferneferuaten in between.)

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Dvar Torah: A little something archaeo-historigraphic for Parashat Beshalach By mettle fatigue   Friday Jan 22, 2016

...While I wouldn’t necessarily argue that a Reed Sea Crossing [like the one in Parashat Beshalach] actually happened as a unique historical event...trade across the Red Sea between the Thebes port of Elim and Elat at the head of the gulf is documented as early as the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt [c. 2613 to 2494 BC] and expeditions crossing the Red Sea heading south to Punt are mentioned in [the documents of] the fifth...

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“Workers in a Sweatshop” by Soshana Afroyim, (Sept 1, 1927–Dec 9, 2015), courtesy of her son, Amos Schueller.

About Freedom: 5th Questions for Passover Seder- By TreeGuy   Thursday Apr 05, 2012

...the Seder ...has the youngest child ask four questions... a start to get conversation rolling so it’s not ...an empty ritual.  This discourse is traditional... modeled after a... format of the Greek Symposium — a meal with a dialogue, socratic questioning, inquiry, mind experiments, etc.  Here are a few [fifth] questions...to ask at your seder to get the pump primed about issues of the day:

What is “Freedom” (after Isaiah Berlin’s essay on Two Concepts of Liberty ...[positive and negative])?     Is freedom only Negative —freedom from coercion from others….independence, i.e. resisting pharaohs who  pressed so hard we could not stand—  or could freedom involve others …a commitment to being part of a community with its obligation, rules and understandings?   “let my people go so they may SERVE me…

What does it mean to live in a Free County?  What ... responsibilities it might entail?

Look at the labels on the clothes you are wearing. Where were they made? What do we know about the people who live there and their working conditions?  What are ethics of benefiting from oppressive working conditions of others?….

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Rev.Dr.Martin Luther King Jr., Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath (carrying Torah), Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

Kitchen Table Kibitzing: Dry Land By remembrance   Sunday Mar 29, 2015

Originally written as a D'Var Torah, "From Selma to San Jose: May We Seek Liberation".   Sources: Three Words for Love: Selma, Aloha, Ahava

Meet Nachshon ben Aminadav

San Jose police officer shot to death

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Berta Golahny and her sculpture, “Sheba” — according to some traditions, the beloved woman in Shir HaShirim was the Queen of Sheba/Saba

D'var Torah: Shabbat Chol HaMoed Pesach By JLan   Friday Mar 29, 2013

Shabbat this week, in the Intermediate Days (Chol HaMoed) of Passover, has a trio of major readings... Exodus 33:12-34:26, covers the period immediately after the sin of the Golden Calf.  It's … notable for the "Thirteen Attributes of God," which I'm going to try to focus on in this d'var torah  The haftorah portion ... from Ezekiel 37:1-14, gives us the famous valley of the dry bones.  And before either of those … the book of Song of Songs … featuring more eroticism than most people probably expect from the Bible...

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Part of the fresco of Ezekiel visions depicted on a wall of the 3rd cent. CE excavated Dura Europos Synagogue in Syria.

D'var Torah: Was Ezekiel really a prophet? By Navy Vet Terp   Friday Mar 28, 2014

...The Book of Leviticus and the two subsequent books of the Torah contain elaborate instructions for the priests to conduct the sacrificial rites in the Temple - but nowhere in the Torah [the Book of Ezekiel is the section of Tanakh called Nevi'im which follows the Torah {a.k.a. “Five Books of Moses”}] is there any mention of special sacrificial rites for the first and seventh days of Nisan.  Who was Ezekiel to change the Law that Moshe Rabbenu —Moses our Teacher and Rabbi—  received on Mount Sinai... Was Ezekiel … a false prophet - the kind of person Moshe Rabbenu warned us about (Deuteronomy 18: 15-22)?  That was the question [solved with long, isolated, intensive scholarship by Tanna sage Hananiah son of Hezekiah]... We think of the Bible as a single Book, the more fundamentalist among us believe it is wholly the Word of God, from beginning to end.  Yet the Bible is really an anthology of many works written by many people, and some of these works, including Ezekiel, barely survived one of the two editorial boards...

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The Breakfast Club 4/13/2014 (Passover Desserts) By TheMomCat   Sunday Apr 13, 2014

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Clandestine poster published in Yugnt Shtimme (יוגנט שטימע), or the Youth Voice (WW2 yiddish publication) during German occupation of Poland. Text:English translation:
All people are brothers;
Yellow, brown, black, and white.
Talk of peoples, colors,
Is all a made-up story!

Progressive Democrat Newsletter, Special Passover 2011 Edition By mole333   Thursday Apr 21, 2011

...Passover [not only recognizes] the origins of Judaism, perhaps mythical perhaps at least partly real, but it becomes the symbol of freedom over slavery and oppression for people all over the world for much of history. It is an aspect of Judaism that became part of the culture of American slaves.

...

 

Passover and Jewish Origins

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And given Republican attacks on unions, I think it is best to remember once more this little bit of Jewish-American-Labor history: A Turning Point in the American Labor Movement

and Passover 1943: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising  Thursday Apr 09, 2009

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Dayenu, dayechem? Passover and being a progressive Jew By plf515   Wednesday Apr 13, 2011

(This is a re-post of a diary I wrote back in 2007)

It's Passover.  For a good introduction … see wiscmass' lovely diary We were slaves, and, in some ways, we still are. One popular part of Passover is songs.  And one of [those] is Dayenu, which is Hebrew for "Enough for us".  The idea of the song is that even if God had done far less than He did, it would have been enough for us.

I have another take on it… 

Dayenu? Enough for us?  I have enough, and more than enough.  

It's them we have to worry about — the poor, the starving, the victimized, the enslaved.  Them

REPUBLICANS worry about … enough for US - the head of Exxon hasn't got enough! Tax cut!)

DEMOCRATS worry about DAI [enough] for CHEM (them).

Or, to use my favorite quote once again:

Ben Shahn (September 12, 1898 – March 14, 1969)

        “Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls, when we all ought to be worried abut our own souls, and other people's bellies.” — Rabbi Israel Salanter 1810-1883

We progressives, of any faith, or no faith, must worry about them…

Dayenu? Certainly.

Dayechem .. needs work.

Have a good Passover.