Once again, with feeling!

Yom revi'i, 14 Iyar 5771.

Today is Pesach Sheni.  I ask the Dearly Beloved for ideas to share with my Ahavat Yisrael group this evening.  He's getting ready to give a guitar class; so I tell him that I just need an idea or two.  I see the little gray cells starting to work, as he scoots his big office chair over to the bookshelf.  "It would be good if it could focus on how ahavat Yisrael and Pesach Sheni might be related," I say to him.

His face brightens.  "It's all about ahavat Yisrael!" he responds enthusiastically.  And then he sets about explaining to me the two very special features of this "second chance" mitzvah that Hashem revealed to our forefathers in the Midbar.

In order to participate in the Pesach offering, it was necessary for the desert generation to be ritually pure.  Coming into contact with the dead rendered one impure; and the process of purification was long enough to preclude them from being able to participate in the sacrificial ritual.  But let me tell you how precious were the people who were our forebears.

There are a few different versions given for what was the mitzvah these people were involved with that prevented them from being able to participate in the Pesach offering.  Perhaps they were carrying the coffin of Yosef.  Perhaps they came across the remains of an unidentified corpse, and took upon themselves the mitzvah of burying it.  Perhaps they were involved with the burial of Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron HaKohen.  In any case, they were fulfilling the mitzvah of burying the dead, which is the purest form of ahavat Yisrael a human being can achieve.  This mitzvah is so dear, because one performs it knowing that the recipient cannot pay him back, cannot reciprocate.  It is the highest form of ahavat Yisrael.

Of course, these great men could have said, "Since we were involved in this mitzvah, we will just wait until next year to offer a Pesach sacrifice.  After all, one is exempt from a mitzvah when in the performance of another mitzvah."

But they not only loved their fellow Jew.  They loved Hashem, and couldn't bear to be left out of the opportunity to serve Him in this great mitzvah of bringing the Pesach sacrifice.

Hashem "made an exception," and gave them a second chance to bring the offering.  Of course, we learn many things from this act of Hashem.  One comes first to mind, as I think of the special group of women I meet with on Wednesday nights, who leave their homes and families for an hour seriously to discuss how we can help to repair the world.

Second chances are not just in the realm of G-d.  Who has let me down, who could stand a second chance?  After all, how many "second" chances has Hashem given me?

I am honored to be part of a family that cares so much about the mitzvot as to have asked for a second chance to honor our Creator.  And I am humbled and honored to be on the giving end of a second chance, just like my Father in Heaven.

Glossary:
Pesach Sheni: a second chance to offer the Passover offering, exactly one month after Passover
Ahavat Yisrael: love of a fellow Jew
Mitzvah: commandment from G-d; also refers to a good deed
Midbar: desert; Biblically refers to the generation of the giving of the Torah
Aaron HaKohen: Aaron the Priest, brother of Moses

Pesach 5770

Yom revi'i, 16 Nisan 5770, Chol HaMo'ed Pesach.

In Neve Daniel, Erev Pesach was especially enjoyable for me this year.  The boys no longer eat in their rooms, and they help to clean for Pesach.  So I had a little time to walk around with my camera to see how other folks were preparing for the chag.



As there are no non-Jews on our yishuv, there is no need to perform the mitzvah of biur chometz with fire trucks and writs from the city government at one public gathering.  So there are little fires all over, with holy families quietly focusing on the words in their machzorim, rather than on the curiosity or curses of complaining neighbors.

While I always appreciated those thoughtful organizations that put together matza-baking events in Baltimore or in New York, there is something special about a neighbor on our street baking matzot in his garage.

 In every generation one is obligated to show how he himself came out of slavery in Egypt.

When our sons were little boys, telling the story of our exodus from Egypt consisted of Kool-Aid "blood," plastic frogs and wild animals and rubber bugs all over the Seder table, and the yearly appearance of "Guidetta."  I got such cathartic pleasure out of dressing up in a snap-brim Fedora and sunglasses, "shooting" my kids with my over-sized Nerf machine gun.  This was our substitute for barad, the miraculous hail made of fire and ice that rained down as G-d's sixth plague on the wicked Mitzri.  The Death of the First Born was reenacted by each of our family members -- and some of our more extroverted guests -- as if the movie cameras were rolling.  (I invariably won the unannounced contest with my heartfelt portrayal of Toshiro Mifune in one of his longer and better samurai death scenes.)   I had a blast -- and so did the kids and the Dearly Beloved.  Some guests claimed it changed their view of Yiddishkeit entirely -- and we can only pray that this was change for the good.

As the boys have grown and matured, the Seder necessarily has evolved with them.

Gone are the blood and the plastic menagerie.   Gone the brilliantly-acted death scenes.  Alas, gone the Fedora and the Tommy-gun.  As we sit down for our one-and-only Seder this year in Israel, my sons say most of the Hagadah in beautiful Hebrew.  As their parents still require a translation, each person at the table recites a passage in English.  As my children are all 100% kosher Jewish hams, they recite each passage in heavily-accented English.  We had Irish, Scottish, British, Russian, French, Jamaican, amorphous Southern USofA, and Baltimore black.  We heard "The Four Questions" in Hebrew, Italian, Gaelic and Klingon.  (Penina, we kept the copies your children brought to our table many years ago...)

We had FUN.

We also had moments of great and weighty seriousness.

Yeshiva Bochur helped me to prepare the maror this year according to an old family recipe acquired from a masochistic Mexican chef in Sierra Vista, Arizona.

The boys -- being men now -- decided to super-size their portions of white vinegar-laced horseradish -- and promptly ended up under the table, over the trash can, in the bathroom -- volubly ejecting their taste of slavery's bitterness.  Afterward, with damp eyes and flushed faces, we talked of our recent losses of Golani soldiers, deputy battalion commander Maj. Eliraz Peretz, and St.-Sgt. Ilan Sviatkovsky.  Eliraz had eulogized his brother who died in Lebanon twelve years ago.  We thought of his wife and four children, and of his mother.  Ilan was only twenty-one years old, nearing the end of his army duty, with all the plans and dreams of youth.  We began to sing "Acheinu" with full hearts.  I don't think my sons have ever connected to the reality of national loss in quite this way before.

We also had an unusual guest this year.

Like many Jews all over the world, we had an empty chair behind a Seder plate set for our precious missing soldiers and for Jonathan Pollard, in prison now for more than a quarter of a century.

We chose a very un-elegant chair -- as we wanted to imagine them sitting in the nicest chair any of them might actually have nearby at this moment.

Our sons really got the story of Pesach this year (which is good, as they are not so very many years from telling the tale to their very own precious children, bs"d).  Yeshiva Bochur shared how he feels that this is a personal exodus for him, as he is spending his first year in Israel as a one-Seder citizen.  And all of the boys shared that being in Israel adds to the significance of the Seder for them, and to the ongoing saga of our people toward the great Geula -- may Hashem hasten it, so that all of our people will taste freedom in our own Land, bimhera ve'ameinu.

Glossary:
Erev Pesach: the preparatory day before Passover
Chag: holiday
Yishuv: small community; settlement
Mitzvah: G-d-given commandment
Biur Chometz: the mitzvah of burning the leaven, to rid ourselves of any trace before the holiday begins
Machzorim: special books for each holiday, with rituals and prayers
Matzot: unleavened bread
Mitzri: Egyptians in the time of the Israelites' exodus from slavery
Yiddishkeit: Judaism
Maror: bitter herbs served at the Seder to remind us of slavery and great national sorrow -- usually horseradish or romaine
Acheinu: "Our Brothers" -- a prayer requesting that G-d ease the suffering of all Jews, no matter where they are in the world
BS"D: with the help of Heaven
Geula: the great Redemption, the End of Days, when there will be peace in the whole world
Bimheira v'ameinu: speedily and in our days