Passover Should Definitely Not Be Passed Over

By Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., LMFT, CLC, SDS

Pass it up, pass it out, pass it here. But don’t pass it over!

Except eight days a year! We should definitely do Passover!

Why? Because G-d did so for us… Passed over our humble abodes. And kept our oldest children alive.

It certainly was a gift! We love all our kids and want to keep them close – except when they drive us crazy, but that’s for another time.

G-d kept us whole.

G-d made the Egyptians so busy with their own problems they no longer wanted to be busy with us.

The gift of Passover is realizing that G-d put power back in our hands. We were no longer serving another nation. We were on our own.

We were not exactly taken out and directed to the palatial Taj Mahal, but that was another lesson learned.

It’s not about where you are. It’s how you are and how you think.

And just getting the freedom to think was a major turnaround. Just getting back in control of time.

In Egypt, the Jews were kept busy every second of the day. Their minds had no strength to focus.

On each Shabbos, we stop, we focus, we think and appreciate where we are at.

Well, maybe, because we can be!

Time is something we didn’t control when enslaved. But, now we can control it. We can take time to see all that affected us and brought us to this moment.

First, we do the detailed cleaning, scrubbing, cooking, shopping – especially steeped in physical tedium but alive with freeing thoughts. the difficult task of shopping for shmura matzah that isn’t mortar-like in and of itself.

Then, at the Seder, we go through, in living color, all the many acts and feats that G-d did for us to bring us out of there and to a better way of living.

And why? You’ve got it! Because thanks to those acts, we can! We’ve got the freedom to do so and the time to do it as well.

So don’t pass on a single opportunity to take in all we went through to get here and where the freedom to think healthy thoughts can take us. Enjoy. Live it up!

Passover should definitely not be passed over!

At the Seder, we do the same thing. We stop and appreciate all we went through to get here. We share it with our kids, and we share it with others who join us.

We don’t pass over anything. We take time to remember it all. We drink and celebrate and even simultaneously mourn the suffering of others.

We are actually inundated with detail.

That preparation actually starts to feel like the old enslavement!

Except, wait! A real part of that we should simultaneously be doing is an inner search of who we are and what we would like to work toward. Not just