Requirements of Eating Matzah

{ "clip_details": { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "requirements-eating-matzah", "title": "Requirements of Eating Matzah", "author": "MyJewishLearning.com", "author_handle": "myjewishlearning-com", "author_initials": "MY", "covertext": "The holiday of Passover has a complex set of rules regarding what may be eaten. Since one is obliged to eat matzah on Pa...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/conversions/picture-248-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/picture-248.jpeg", "body": "The holiday of Passover has a complex set of rules regarding what may be eaten. Since one is obliged to eat matzah on Passover, it is no surprise that much has been written about matzah, not only when to eat, it but how much must be eaten and who must fulfill this obligation. This article looks at a number of texts dealing with the intricacies of consuming matzah on Passover.\n\nWhen Is One Obligated to Eat Matzah?\n\nThe command to eat matzah appears ten times in the Torah. Nine times the command is for seven days, \"Seven days shall you eat matzah\" (Exodus 12:15). The tenth time, however, says, \"Six days you shall eat unleavened bread\" (Deuteronomy 16:8).\n\nA simple and obvious statement of the law (which did not, however, become the accepted practice) is stated by the tanna (rabbi of the Mishnaic era) R. Shimon, originally in the Sifre Deuteronomy (a Tannaitic Midrash):\n\n\"Has it not already been said, 'Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread'? Then why does the Torah say 'You shall eat no leavened bread ( hametz ) with it'? When one is obligated to eat matzah, there is also a prohibition against hametz; when there is no obligation to eat matzah, there is no prohibition against hametz\" (Bavli Pesachim 28b, cf. Sifre Deuteronomy 130).\n\nThe obligation to eat matzah and the prohibition against hametz are co-extensive. Since the prohibition against hametz is clearly for seven days, the obligation to eat matzah, according to Rabbi Shimon, also lasts seven days. This is also the approach of the apocryphal book of Jubilees, and is also the custom of the Karaites and the Samaritans, groups that broke off from the main body of the people of Israel. The most common rabbinic interpretation of the verse from Deuteronomy that prescribes six days rejects this early understanding:\n\n\"One verse says, 'Seven days you shall eat matzah,' and one verse says, 'Six days you shall eat matzah.' How can both of these verses be maintained? The seventh day was included (in the first verse) but then excluded (from the second verse). That which is excluded from a more inclusive statement is meant to teach us about the whole statement. So, just as on the seventh day it is optional ( r'shut ), so all the other days, it is optional. Does this mean that it is optional on the first night too? The verse 'In the first month, on the fourteenth day in the evening, you shall eat matzah' (Exodus 12:18) fixes it as an obligation ( hovah ) to eat matzah on the first night\" (Mekhilta, Pischa 8).\n\nAccording to this midrash, Deuteronomy refers to the first six days, and accordingly, the seventh day of the holiday has no obligation to eat matzah. But since there is no essential difference between the seventh day and any of the other days, the rabbis argue, what is true of the seventh day must be true of all of the days. Therefore, there is no general obligation to eat matzah throughout the holiday. On the other hand, the explicit verse from Exodus 12:18 does create a requirement to eat matzah on the first night. Outside of the land of Israel, Jews who observe two days of the holiday are rabbinically obligated to eat matzah at each of the seders, but not on the other days of the festival.\n\nHow Much Matzah is One Supposed to Eat?\n\nDuring the seder, one makes two different blessings over the matzah. The first blessing is hamotzi (\"…who brings forth bread from the earth\"), which is recited whenever one eats bread, and which is obligatory at any festival meal. The second blessing recalls the particular obligation to eat matzah (\"…who has sanctified us with the commandments and commanded us concerning the eating of matzah\"). In general, when one is obligated to eat something, the standard amount is a volume equivalent to that of an olive, a k'zayit. \n\nHow should one fulfill this obligation to eat matzah? Hamotzi on other festivals is usually said on a whole loaf of challah, so on Passover should one eat the olive's-bulk of matzah from the top of the three matzot on the seder plate, which is still whole and is therefore analogous to a loaf? Or should one eat from the middle, broken matzah for the fulfillment of the obligation to eat matzah?\n\nJoseph Karo writing in the standard code of Jewish law, the Shulhan Arukh, predictably requires a bulk of matzah equivalent to two olives:\n\n\"One washes one's hands and makes the blessing and takes the matzot... in hand and makes the blessings 'hamotzi' and 'on eating matzah.' Then one breaks from the top, complete matzah and the broken middle piece, both together... One eats an olive's bulk from each of them while reclining. If one cannot eat matzah equivalent to the bulk of two olives together, eat the one for hamotzi first and then the one [for the blessing] on eating matzah. Then one takes an olive's bulk of bitter herbs... and makes the blessing on eating bitter herbs and eats it without reclining. Then one takes the third matzah and breaks a piece from it to wrap with the bitter herbs\" (Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayyim 475:1).\n\nModern authorities have debated whether the air pockets in matzah count toward measuring an olive's bulk, and most say that they do not. They also have debated about whether an olive's bulk is really the size of a modern olive, or whether it is actually the bulk of an egg. That makes a single \"olive's bulk\" equivalent to approximately two-thirds of a standard, machine-made matzah or the area equivalent to an average adult hand of hand-made matzah. In addition, modern authorities also define a time limit within which one should, ideally, consume the matzah.\n\nIs All Matzah the Same?\n\nIn order for dough to become matzah, it must at least have the potential to leaven. According to the rabbis, leavening ( himutz ) only occurs when flour from the five grains (wheat, oats, barley, rye, or spelt) is moistened with water (by their definition). Flour that is moistened with wine, oil, honey, eggs, or fruit juice does not leaven; the fermentation that occurs is called sirchon (rotting). Despite the negative category name, sirchon is different leavening, which is the category with which the Passover prohibitions are concerned.\n\nTherefore, the matzah-like product made with flour and apple juice that is called \"egg matzah\" or matzah ashirah (rich matzah) is not subject to leavening, just \"rotting,\" and is theoretically acceptable for Passover use. Widespread custom, however, rejected its use. The Ashkenazic (East European) authority, R. Moses Isserles (known as the Rema), however, is wary of this permission and gives the custom legal force:\n\n\"Eggs and other liquids are all considered like fruit juice (which lead to rotting, not leavening). Rema: But in our communities, we do not knead (matzah) dough with fruit juice... And one should not change from this unless in a time of emergency for the sake of a sick or old person who needs this\" (Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayyim 462:4).\n\nThe Ashkenazic restrictions on use of \"egg matzah\" are usually printed on the box. Even according to Sephardic (Mediterranean) practice, however, one cannot fulfill the obligation to eat matzah at seder with \"egg matzah.\" First, the obligation must be fulfilled with real matzah, and real matzah must have the potential to leaven, which egg matzah does not. Second, the command is to eat \"matzah, the bread of poverty\" (Deuteronomy 16:3) and not egg matzah, which is also known as rich matzah.\n\nAn additional concern comes from the Torah's command, \"You shall watch the matzot\" (Exodus 12:17). This is understood by the midrash as \"watch it so that it does not become unfit\" (Mekhilta Pischa 9), that is, it should not be allowed to leaven. When one begins to watch the dough is a matter of some controversy. The earliest sources assume that the watching begins with the kneading of the dough. The common practice today is to watch the flour from time it is ground. Most commercial matzah is watched from the time of grinding.\n\nThe most strict approach, however, is to watch the grain itself from the time it is harvested.\n\n\"[Rava] said to those who were turning over the sheaves of wheat (during the harvest): 'When you flip them over, do so for the sake of the mitzvah.' From this we can reason that watching is required initially from the beginning to the end\" (Bavli Pesachim 40a).\n\nMatzah made from flour ground from grain which has been watched since harvest is called shemurah matzah (watched matzah). Many Jews choose to use shemurah matzah, especially hand-made shemurah matzah, for fulfillment of the obligation to eat matzah at the seder.\n\nWho is Obligated to Eat Matzah?\n\nThe eating of matzah is a positive commandment (as opposed to not eating hametz, which is a negative commandment) that takes place at a specific time. There is a general rule in talmudic literature that women are exempt from positive commandments that take place at a specific time (Mishnah Kiddushin 1:7). Indeed, women are exempt from reciting the shema, wearing tefillin (both in Mishnah Berakhot 3:3), sitting in the sukkah (Mishnah Sukkah 2:8), shaking the lulav, blowing the shofar, and wearing tzitzit (all three in Bavli Kiddushin 33b).\n\nOn the other hand, women are obligated to observe other positive, time-specified commandments such as fasting on Yom Kippur (Bavli Sukkah 28a), lighting Hanukkah candles (Bavli Shabbat 23a), reciting the megillah on Purim (Bavli Megillah 4a), and eating three meals on Shabbat (Rabbenu Nissim on Shabbat 44a). Based on the association of not eating hametz with the positive command of eating matzah (akin to the midrash of Rabbi Shimon, above), women are also obligated to eat matzah at the seders (Bavli Pesachim 43b). For that matter, women are also obligated to drink the four cups of wine (Bavli Pesachim 108a-b), to recite the Haggadah, and to chant the Hallel (psalms of praise) at the seder (Mishnah Berurah 472:14).\n\n\n", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Jeffrey Spitzer", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Motzi-Matzah", "slug": "motzi-matzah" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 367, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Requirements of Eating Matzah | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/requirements-eating-matzah", "og:title": "Requirements of Eating Matzah | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, "contributed_by": { "author": "MyJewishLearning.com", "handle": "myjewishlearning-com", "author_initials": "MY", "total_books": 1, "total_clips": 12, "total_followers": 0, "is_following": 0 }, "user_book": null, "clips_by_author": [ { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "seder-plate-and-table", "title": "The Seder Plate and Table", "author": "MyJewishLearning.com", "author_handle": "myjewishlearning-com", "author_initials": "MY", "covertext": "The Passover Haggadah demands that each person see him or herself as having personally come forth out of Egypt. Accordin...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/conversions/picture-248-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/picture-248.jpeg", "body": "The Passover Haggadah demands that each person see him or herself as having personally come forth out of Egypt. Accordingly, the seder is one of the most sensory-heavy rituals of the Jewish year. During the seder, we don't just tell the story of the Exodus, we see, smell, feel, and taste liberation.\nMany of the elements of this sensory experience appear on the seder plate (k'arah), which serves as the centerpiece of the seder table. The seder plate traditionally holds five or six items, each of which symbolizes a part (or multiple parts) of the Passover story: \nKarpas--a green vegetable, most often parsley. Karpas represents the initial flourishing of the Israelites during the first years in Egypt. At the end of the biblical book of Genesis, Joseph moves his family to Egypt, where he becomes the second-in-command to Pharaoh. Protected by Joseph's exalted status, the family lives safely for several generations and proliferate greatly, becoming a great nation. The size of this growing population frightens the new Pharaoh, who enslaves the Israelites, lest they make war on Egypt. Even under slave conditions, the Israelites continue to reproduce, and Pharaoh eventually decrees that all baby boys be killed. In the course of the seder, we dip the karpasin salt water (Ashkenazi custom) or vinegar (Sephardi custom) in order to taste both the hope of new birth and the tears that the Israelite slaves shed over their condition.\nKarpas also symbolizes the new spring. One of the names for Passover is Hag Ha-Aviv or the holiday of spring. Right around Passover the first buds emerge, and we look forward to the warmth and sense of possibility that accompany the beginning of spring.\nSome Ashkenazi Jews use a potato for karpas, as green vegetables were not readily available in Eastern Europe.\nHaroset--This mix of fruits, wine or honey, and nuts symbolizes the mortar that the Israelite slaves used to construct buildings for Pharaoh. The name itself comes from the Hebrew word cheres or clay. Ashkenazi Jews generally include apples in haroset, a nod to the midrashic tradition that the Israelite women would go into the fields and seduce their husbands under the apple trees, in defiance of the Egyptian attempts to prevent reproduction by separating men and women.\nSephardic recipes for haroset allude to this fertility symbolism by including fruits, such as dates and figs, mentioned in Song of Songs, the biblical book that is most infused with images of love and sexuality.\nMaror--This bitter herb allows us to taste the bitterness of slavery. Today, most Jews use horseradish as maror. Originally, though, maror was probably a bitter lettuce, such as romaine, or a root, such as chicory. Like life in Egypt, these lettuces and roots taste sweet when one first bites into them, but then become bitter as one eats more. We dip maror into harosetin order to associate the bitterness of slavery with the work that caused so much of this bitterness.\nHazeret--A second bitter herb, used in korech or the Hillel sandwich, which consists of matzah and bitter herbs (some add haroset as well). Many Jews use horseradish for maror and romaine lettuce or another bitter green for hazeret. Others use the same vegetable for both parts of the seder, and do not include hazeret on the seder plate at all.\nZ'roa--A roasted lamb shank bone that symbolizes the lamb that Jews sacrificed as the special Passover offering when the Temple stood in Jerusalem. The z'roa does not play an active role in the seder, but serves as a visual reminder of the sacrifice that the Israelites offered immediately before leaving Egypt and that Jews continued to offer until the destruction of the Temple. Vegetarians often substitute a roasted beet, both because the red of the beet resembles the blood of the sacrifice and because the Talmud mentions beets as one of the vegetables sometimes dipped during the seder.\nBeitzah--A roasted egg that symbolizes the hagigah sacrifice, which would be offered on every holiday (including Passover) when the Temple stood. The roundness of the egg also represents the cycle of life--even in the most painful of times, there is always hope for a new beginning.\n<h3>Placement</h3>\nThere are a few traditions regarding the arrangement of items on the seder plate. Most commonly, the maror is placed in the middle of the plate. The hazeret is at the six o'clock position followed by, moving clockwise, karpas (seven o'clock), beitzah (11 o'clock), z'roa (one o'clock), and haroset (five o'clock).\n<h3>On the Table</h3>\nIn addition to the items on the seder plate, the seder table should also have three pieces of matzah wrapped or covered in a cloth and a container of salt water or vinegar in which to dip the karpas. Some seder plates have a compartment for matzah underneath, or include space for salt water among the other symbols. In most cases, though, matzah and salt water or vinegar sit near, but not on, the seder plate.\nMany contemporary Jews add additional items to the seder plate to symbolize modern liberation struggles. The most common new item is an <a href=\"http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Passover/TO_Pesach_Seder/Arrangement_214/Orange.htm\">orange</a>, which honors the role of women and/or gays and lesbians in Jewish life. The orange symbolizes the fruitfulness that these previously marginalized communities bring to Jewish life. Some Jews place an olive on the seder plate to signal hope for eventual peace between Israelis and Palestinians.\nOne way to encourage participation in the seder is to ask each guest to bring one item that, for him or her, represents liberation. Participants might bring family heirlooms that remind them of their family's immigration story, newspaper stories about current liberation struggles, or other symbolic objects. Each guest should place this item near the seder plate and, at an appropriate time in the seder, explain its significance", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Rabbi Jill Jacobs", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Commentary / Readings", "slug": "commentary-readings" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 269, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "The Seder Plate and Table | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/seder-plate-and-table", "og:title": "The Seder Plate and Table | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "maror-101", "title": "Maror 101", "author": "MyJewishLearning.com", "author_handle": "myjewishlearning-com", "author_initials": "MY", "covertext": "Bitterness isn't just a tradition in the Jewish community--it's a commandment. Here we answer some frequently asked ques...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/conversions/picture-248-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/picture-248.jpeg", "body": "Bitterness isn't just a tradition in the Jewish community--it's a commandment. Here we answer some frequently asked questions about Passover's bitter herbs, also known as maror. \n\nQ: Where does the commandment to eat bitter herbs come from?\n\nA: In Exodus 12:8 the Torah commands us to eat the paschal sacrifice, \"with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs.\" This same law is repeated in Numbers 9:20. Though we do not have the paschal sacrifice any more the obligation to eat the bitter herbs remains.\n\nQ: What qualifies as a bitter herb?\n\nA: The Hebrew word used is maror, which comes from the root mar, meaning bitter. In the Talmud, the rabbis came up with a list of qualifications for whatever vegetable you use as maror. It should be bitter, have sap, and be grayish in appearance. It also needs to be a vegetable that grows from the earth, not from a tree. (Pesahim 39a) Though we tend to refer to maror in English as an herb, it would be more accurate to say vegetable.\n\nQ: What are some examples of things that could be bitter herbs at my seder this year?\n\nA: The Mishnah (Pesahim 2:6) lists five possibilities that can be used at the seder, but it's hard to know for certain exactly what plants they are referring to. The one that is most clear is called hazeret in Hebrew, which is commonly understood to mean lettuce. So many halakhic authorities today say the best form of bitter herbs is romaine lettuce, even though it is not initially bitter, but has a bitter aftertaste. The outer older leaves of romaine lettuce can contain a grayish milky sap that is very bitter. If lettuce is not available, any vegetable is suitable, and other common options are celery and horseradish (also known as chrein).\n\nQ: What is the symbolism of maror?\n\nA: Though it isn't explicit in the Torah, bitter herbs are commonly held to be a symbol of the bitterness the Israelites felt when they were slaves in Egypt. By eating the herbs we feel bitterness ourselves, and can more easily imagine ourselves as slaves. When we dip the maror in the haroset we are associating the bitterness we feel with the hard labor the Israelites experienced at the hands of the Egyptians.\n\nQ: Why would we say a blessing over something that's bitter and symbolizes hardship and suffering?\n\nA: When we dip maror in haroset we recognize that bitter and sweet often come together in life. To be a Jew is to see both the bitter and the sweet in the world, and to bless God for both. Maror also reminds us that misery is not meaningless. The pain that the Israelites suffered as slaves in Egypt was not for naught. It led to their cries for freedom, and ultimately their redemption.\n\n\n", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "MyJewishLearning.com", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Maror", "slug": "maror" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 285, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Maror 101 | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/maror-101", "og:title": "Maror 101 | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "ten-plagues-3", "title": "The Ten Plagues", "author": "MyJewishLearning.com", "author_handle": "myjewishlearning-com", "author_initials": "MY", "covertext": "One of the most dramatic moments of the Passover seder comes with the recitation of the ten plagues that, the Bible says...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/conversions/picture-248-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/picture-248.jpeg", "body": "One of the most dramatic moments of the Passover seder comes with the recitation of the ten plagues that, the Bible says, God brought on the Egyptians to persuade Pharaoh to free the Israelites from slavery. As we recite each plague, we spill a drop of wine in recognition, according to many interpretations, that the process of our liberation caused suffering to the Egyptian people.\nThough it's one of the best known details of the exodus story, the plague narrative raises a number of complicated questions. Given the biblical assumption of God's omnipotence, one might expect God to be able to whisk the Israelites out of Egypt without such dramatic measures. The biblical story also does not explain the significance of the specific set of plagues that God imposes on the Egyptians. And many contemporary Jews are bothered by what seems to be excessive and perhaps needless suffering on the part of the Egyptian population for the sins of its leader.\n<h3>Traditional Interpretations</h3>\nA number of rabbinic sources describe the plagues as retribution for Pharaoh's rejection of God and for the Egyptians' idol worshipping practices. In explaining the first plague, one midrash comments, \"Why were the waters first smitten and with blood? Because Pharaoh and the Egyptians worshipped the Nile, and God said, 'I will smite their god first and then his people.'\" (Shemot Rabbah 9:9). Likewise, Ramban, a 12th century Jewish commentator, suggests that God punishes Pharaoh not primarily for enslaving the Israelite people, but rather for dismissing God and ignoring a divine command (see his comment to Exodus 7:16). The final plague, the killing of the firstborn, targets both the people and their most visible god--Pharaoh--who also loses his oldest son and thus the successor to the throne.\nThe primary goal of the plagues, according to most rabbinic sources, is the demonstration of God's unparalleled power. Pharaoh's magicians succeed in replicating the first two plagues--blood and frogs--but stumble in their attempts to produce lice. Several commentators explain this failure by noting the use of the word \"l'hotzi,\" \"to bring out,\" in the description of the plague of lice. Producing the plagues of blood or frogs requires only the transformation of an existing substance: God, through Moses and Aaron, changes the water to blood and draws (presumably pre-existing) frogs out of the water. In contrast, God creates the lice. Only the creator of the universe, according to the rabbis, can create something new. These unreplicable plagues persuade Pharaoh and his people of God's power and build faith in God among the people of Israel.\nAs further evidence of the miraculous nature of the plagues, one midrash notes the biblical description of the plague of hail as a mixture of fire and ice, commenting: \"Imagine two fierce legions who were always at war with one another, but when the king needed their services for his own battle, he made peace with them, so that both should carry out the orders of the king. In like manner, fire and hail are hostile to each other, but when the time came to make war with Egypt, God made peace between them and both smote the Egyptians\" (Shemot Rabbah 12:4).\nThe midrash further understands the hail to prefigure the punishment that, according to the Book of Ezekiel, God will bring on Gog and Magog in the war that will precede the coming of the messianic age. In linking the redemption of the Israelites from slavery with the ultimate redemption of the world, the midrash implicitly justifies any violence as a necessary means of reaching an unambiguously-positive end. Beyond being a punishment to the Egyptians, the plagues are a step in the process of redeeming the world.\n<h3>Contemporary Interpretations</h3>\nMany contemporary explanations of the ten plagues attempt to reconcile the presumed suffering of the Egyptians with modern-day conceptions of ethics and treatment of the other. Rabbi David Teutsch, a former president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, for example, suggests that God is not, in fact, the author of the harshest plague--that of the murder of the firstborn of Egypt. Rather, he says, it is human beings who interpret this event as divine:\n\"How can we understand God's role in the death of the firstborn? One explanation suggests that all who did not defend the Israelite slaves in Egypt are responsible for what Pharaoh imposed. Thus, God's punishment of the Egyptians was justified. Another explanation holds that only in hindsight did the Israelites see the hand of God in the death of the Egyptians. God does not intervene in human history this way... By this reckoning, what is important is not whether the firstborn died, but whether we can see the power of human redemption in our lives as flowing from the divine\" (Rabbi Joy Levitt and Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, ed., A Night of Questions, 61).\nRather than justify the plagues, some modern-day commentators instead try to sharpen our awareness of the suffering caused by these plagues in order to help us empathize with others who are oppressed. The Journey Continues: The Ma'yan Haggadah, produced by the women's program of the Jewish Community Center of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, offers the following meditation on the plagues:\n\"As we ate our Pascal lambs that last night in Egypt the darkness was pierced with screams. Our door posts were protected by a sign of blood. But from the windows of the Egyptians rose an anguished cry: the death of the first-born.\n\"Yah Sh'chinah [an appeal to God using a term associated with God's feminine side]soften our hearts and the hearts of our enemies. Help us to dream new paths to freedom.\n\"So that the next sea-opening is not also a drowning; so that our singing is never again their wailing. So that our freedom leaves no one orphaned, childless, gasping for air\" (Tamara Cohen, ed., The Journey Continues, 70).\nMany Jews update the seder by supplementing the recitation of the biblical plagues with the mention of contemporary \"plagues\" such as war, hatred, and disease. The Jewish Council on Urban Affairs' Immigrant Justice Haggadah counts as plagues \"the detention of immigrants, unwarranted deportations, hate crimes, the denial of drivers' licenses and other services to undocumented immigrants, hopelessness, apathy, and fear of speaking out.\" The Love and Justice Haggadah includes in a tongue-in-cheek list of the plagues of contemporary life--\"reality TV, muzak, and SUVs.\" Feminist haggadot add plagues such as sexism and violence against women; environmental haggadot mention the destruction of natural resources; and haggadot focused on inter-group relations speak of the plagues of prejudice and distrust.\nEvery modern application of the story of slavery and liberation necessitates the creation of a new list of \"plagues\" to be eradicated.\nThe plague narrative is both an integral part of the exodus story and one of the most difficult parts of this story to understand. Contemporary readings of the exodus therefore struggle to reinterpret the plagues to reflect our current consciousness and/or to expand the list of plagues in order to draw attention to all of the parts of the world that remain in need of liberation.", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Rabbi Jill Jacobs", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Maggid - Beginning", "slug": "maggid-beginning" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 366, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "The Ten Plagues | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/ten-plagues-3", "og:title": "The Ten Plagues | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "next-year-jerusalem", "title": "Next Year in Jerusalem", "author": "MyJewishLearning.com", "author_handle": "myjewishlearning-com", "author_initials": "MY", "covertext": "Traditionally, Jerusalem has been the focus of longing for Diaspora Jews who were forced from their land and the Temple...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/conversions/picture-248-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/picture-248.jpeg", "body": "Traditionally, Jerusalem has been the focus of longing for Diaspora Jews who were forced from their land and the Temple of their God. Psalm 137 is the well-known lament of the Babylonian Jews who wept \"by the rivers of Babylon\" and declared, \"If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither.\" \nYet with Israel a modern state, some see that longing as anachronistic, and with it the phrase that traditionally ends the seder, \"Next Year in Jerusalem.\" The temple was destroyed 2,000 years ago, and many Jews today feel comfortable, religiously and materially, in their Diaspora communities. Some are uncomfortable with the extremes of religious life and the ongoing political strife in the Jewish state. The issue is even more salient for Israeli Jews, residents of a country whose capital is Jerusalem, for whom \"next year in Jerusalem\" therefore makes little sense on its surface.\nWhat, then, does it mean for today's Jew to utter the words \"next year in Jerusalem\" at the end of every Passover seder?\n<h3>Redemption, Past & Future</h3>\nThe most straightforward answer is that \"Jerusalem\" refers to the future city--and its Temple--rebuilt when the Messiah comes. Most traditional Jews feel quite comfortable expressing this messianic longing at the end of the seder, just as at the end of each Shabbat Jews recite the hope that the Messiah should come \"speedily in our day.\" And to clarify for Israelis, some traditional Haggadot indicate that those in the Jewish state should replace the phrase with \"next year in Jerusalem, the rebuilt,\" implying a rebuilt Temple.\nBut many liberal Jews do not accept the idea of the Messiah and the return to a Temple-based Judaism focused on Jerusalem. The phrase \"next year in Jerusalem,\" however, can be interpreted in many different ways. These words convey a web of meaning from concrete to abstract, and from earthly to holy.\nAlthough the phrase itself entered the Haggadah only in the Middle Ages, it resonates thematically with ancient biblical themes of past and future redemption. On the seder night, each participant has personally experienced the physical redemption at that Red Sea. As the Haggadah says, \"For it was not our forefathers alone whom the Holy One redeemed; He redeemed us, too, with them,\" and, \"In every generation, every individual must feel as if he or she personally had come out of Egypt.\" Then, as we end the seder, we utter this phrase that reaches forward to the coming of the Messiah and to complete spiritual redemption, represented by Jerusalem.\n<h3>The Challenge of Jerusalem</h3>\nThe first challenge is Jerusalem itself--is it a place we want to be, this year or next? According to midrash, Abraham called Jerusalem, which by tradition was the site of Isaac's near sacrifice, by the name Yireh (\"he will see [God]\"). But King Malkitzedak had named the city Shalem (\"complete\"). Not wanting to offend either of these righteous men, God combined the two names into Yerushalayim. And still today the living, breathing Jerusalem burns with the fervor of the holiness implied by Yireh as well as with the hatreds that sunder the wholeness evoked by Shalem.\nJerusalem has acquired something of a superhuman status because of its religious and legendary status as the ancient center of the world and the site of the two Temples. The Holy of Holies within the Temples was the physical space where human and divine would meet, once a year, at Yom Kippur. The High Priest would approach the inner altar to ask forgiveness for Israel's sins from God's Shekhinah, or Presence. Some say the Shekhinah still dwells near the broken Western Wall of the Temple.\nThis sense of divine presence, which can create a powerful sense of the holy, can also go awry into the reaches of fanaticism, as recent history records all too well. Regardless of where they stand on issues of politics and how to solve Jerusalem's problems, Jews worldwide look to the Land of Israel with sorrow at the ongoing bloodshed and hatred there. Is there a way, then, to reconcile these extremes so that all Jews can look to \"next year in Jerusalem\" with hope and not despair?\nOne possible answer is found in another midrashic understanding of Yerushalayim's name as a combination of yerushah, or inheritance, and the plural ending, ayim, suggesting a \"double\" inheritance. Then add the creative imagination of the Rabbis. In a midrash they interpret Psalm 122:3, \"Jerusalem built up, a city knit [connected] together,\" to mean there are two Jerusalems. Yerushalayim Shel Matah is the earthly Jerusalem, which may be the object of our ambivalence but is also the source of Torah, and Yerushalayim Shel Maalah, the upper Jerusalem--a heavenly version relieved of the contradictions of human life.\nFor some Jews, this upper Jerusalem is perhaps the appropriate object of our longings at the end of the seder. It represents the possibility of intimacy with God that is relieved of the trappings of religious polemic. It offers us the shelemut, completeness, that often feels beyond reach in our shattered daily lives. Finally, it may represent the final peace of messianic redemption.\n<h3>God in the Earthly Jerusalem</h3>\nBut the rabbis were wary, as we should be, of the consequences of making Jerusalem into an ideal, abstracted from the realities of its everydayness. A midrash related in The Book of Legends, edited by H.N. Bialik, asks what is meant by Hosea 11:9, which states, \"The Holy One in the midst of thee, and I will not come into the city\"? Rabbi Isaac related the following explanation by Rabbi Yohanan: \"'The holy one' refers not to God but to the holy city, and God the Holy One is saying, 'I will not come into the city of Jerusalem that is above until I first come into the city of Jerusalem that is below.'\"\nPerhaps, then, it is our responsibility to make the world, and the earthly Jerusalem, into a place where God can reside, and if not now, then perhaps \"next year.\" In every Torah service, we repeat the words of Isaiah 2:3, which proclaim Jerusalem as the source of God's Torah and ethical teachings: \"For instruction shall come forth from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.\" The very next verse in Isaiah offers a classic description of the messianic future: \"And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: Nations shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again know war.\"\nOne interpretation is that by implementing God's word, the Jewish people in the Diaspora and in Israel can have a role in bringing peace to the world and to Jerusalem.\n<h3>Eternal Hope</h3>\nFor Diaspora Jews who find it difficult to authentically recite this phrase at the end of the seder, the opening words, \"next year,\" offer another entry point. The uttering of \"next year in Jerusalem\" is a way of expressing solidarity with Klal Yisrael, the entire Jewish community, past, present and future. \"Next year\" encapsulates that continuing flicker of hope that has sustained Jews for centuries past in the midst of despair. It also offers hope that the Israeli nation of today will find peace and that Jerusalem will remain a potential future haven for Diaspora Jews who still live under political and economic oppression.\nBut our phrase also offers a more majestic sense of hope. The words \"next year\" suggest a sense of being on the cusp but not yet having arrived, of possibility that is ripe and alive with implication. Rabbi David Hartman, in The Leader's Guide to the Family Participation Haggadah: A Different Night, sees a \"radical futurism\" reflected in the phrase, with its intimation of messianic possibility. He sees both the miracles of creation and the exodus from Egypt as pointing to the potential for revolutionary change--that things don't have to be the way they are, that oppressive regimes can change.\nEvery year, he writes, Jews drink four cups of wine and then pour a fifth for Elijah. \"The cup is poured, but not yet drunk. Yet the cup of hope is poured every year. Passover is the night for reckless dreams; for visions about what a human being can be, what society can be, what people can be, what history may become. That is the significance of 'Le-shanah ha-ba-a b'Yerushalayim' (Next year in Jerusalem).\"", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Michele Alperin", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Nirtzah", "slug": "nirtzah" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 318, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Next Year in Jerusalem | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/next-year-jerusalem", "og:title": "Next Year in Jerusalem | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "reenacting-exodus", "title": "Reenacting the Exodus", "author": "MyJewishLearning.com", "author_handle": "myjewishlearning-com", "author_initials": "MY", "covertext": "Jews are a people of memory. Perhaps more than anything else, what binds Jews together is a shared collective narrative,...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/conversions/picture-248-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/picture-248.jpeg", "body": "Jews are a people of memory. Perhaps more than anything else, what binds Jews together is a shared collective narrative, preserved and developed through stories, teachings and rituals. The Torah elevates memory to the level of a commandment, instructing us at various times to remember Shabbat, to remember that we were slaves in Egypt, and to remember that the tribe of Amalek attacked the Jewish people on their way out of Egypt. \nThe command to remember demands more than the passive recollection of historical events. Remembering that God rested on the seventh day requires people similarly to rest on Shabbat. Remembering the experience of slavery obligates us to care for those whom society neglects. Remembering Amalek involves fighting oppression in every generation.\nWhile historical memory plays a role in virtually every Jewish holiday, the holiday of Pesach (Passover)--more than any other--is the holiday of remembrance. Going a step beyond the Torah's insistence that the Jewish people remember the experience of slavery, the Hagaddah demands that \"in each generation, each person is obligated to see himself or herself [lirot et atzmo] as though he or she personally came forth from Egypt.\"\nFor the Hagaddah, it is not enough simply to remember or even to retell the story of the exodus from Egypt. Rather, one must also project oneself into the story in order personally to experience the move from slavery to liberation.\n<h3>Beyond Remembering</h3>\nThe easiest way to understand the obligation to see oneself as personally having come out of Egypt is to read this statement in light of the Hagaddah's earlier comment that \"it was not only our ancestors whom God redeemed from Egypt, for if God had not redeemed our ancestors, then we and our children and our children's children would still be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt.\" A literal understanding of the assertion that we would still be enslaved in Egypt had God not redeemed our ancestors from slavery at a specific historical moment enables us to see the exodus narrative as our personal liberation story.\nHowever, simply referencing the comment that God, in effect, liberated us from Egypt along with our ancestors does not fully explain the obligation to see ourselves as having come forth from Egypt. After all, a tradition that seeks meaning in every seemingly superfluous word, letter, and detail cannot allow the repetition of an entire idea to go unnoticed. Thus, commentators on the Hagaddah suggest a number of additional interpretations of the textual insistence that we remember the exodus by reëxperiencing it.\nSome commentators emphasize the individual nature of the statement that each person should see himself or herself as having gone forth from Egypt. The Ritba (Rabbi Yom Tov ben Avraham Ishbili, 125-1330) stresses that \"every single individual must see and look at himself as though he had been a slave in Egypt and as though he went forth to freedom.\" Whereas the Hagaddah frames in the plural its earlier comment that God redeemed both our ancestors and us, the obligation to see ourselves as former slaves is articulated in the singular. On Pesach, the Ritba suggests, it is not enough to speak of our communal liberation from slavery; rather, we must each experience this redemption also as a personal journey.\nTaking this emphasis on the individual one step further, the N'tziv (Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, 1817-1893) likens the command to see oneself as having come forth from Egypt to the talmudic comment that each person should say that the entire world was created for his or her sake. In the same way, the N'tziv says, each person should consider the exodus from Egypt as a personal miracle, done only for him or her. One who sees the exodus as having taken place for his or her own benefit cannot help but be grateful to God and will, therefore, be exuberant in offering the praises that appear in the next few lines of the Hagaddah.\n<h3>Showing, Not Seeing</h3>\nIn the Sephardic text of the Hagaddah, the command to project oneself back into the exodus narrative appears in a slightly, but meaningfully, different form. There, the obligation is to show oneself (l'harot et atmzo) as having come forth from Egypt. With the addition of a single Hebrew letter, this version changes the obligation from one commanding personal reflection to one governing the way in which one acts in the world.\nIn Sephardic communities, the command to \"show oneself\" as having been a slave has led to the custom to act out certain parts of the seder. For example, guests may hit each other with scallions to commemorate the beatings of the Egyptian taskmasters, and may walk around the table holding matzah in order to play out the liberation from slavery.\nSome have explained the Sephardic version of the text as an obligation to teach others about the experience of slavery. According to Rabbi Chaim Joseph David Azulai (1724-1806), \"It is not enough to think about this and to rejoice internally. Rather, one needs to 'show' this excitement physically so that everyone sitting in one's house will recognize and know it.\" Similarly, Isaac Abravanel (1437-1508) suggests that we need to pretend that we, personally, came out of Egypt in order to \"transfer the memory from parent to child.\"\nBy acting the part of liberated slaves, parents offer their children a sense of experiencing the liberation first-hand. These children will similarly transfer the memory to their own children. In presenting oneself as a liberated slave, one forces the others at the table also to personalize their own experience of liberation.\n<h3>Seeing & Showing</h3>\nAn attempt to reconcile the two versions of the Hagaddah text might suggest that seeing oneself as a liberated slave necessarily leads to showing oneself as such and vice versa. In some cases, self reflection leads to changing the way in which one acts in the world. In other cases, action must precede understanding. The obligation to \"see\" and/or \"show\" oneself as a liberated slave suggests that memory is a two-fold process that involves both reflection and action. Just as the command to \"remember Shabbat\" or to \"remember what Amalek did\" imposes obligation, so too, the commandment to remember our slavery in Egypt cannot be fulfilled through passive memory alone.\nDuring the seder, we can fulfill the double command to show and to see ourselves as having come forth from Egypt by retelling the story in our own words and through the lens of our own experience. By acting out parts of the seder, or by retelling the narrative as though we experienced the exodus, we show ourselves as participants in this story. By using the story of the exodus as a framework for exploring our own personal liberation struggles or current political struggles, we can come to see ourselves as participants in the continuing journey toward freedom.", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Rabbi Jill Jacobs", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "-- Exodus Story", "slug": "exodus-story" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 295, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Reenacting the Exodus | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/reenacting-exodus", "og:title": "Reenacting the Exodus | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "aramean-destroyed-my-father", "title": "An Aramean Destroyed My Father", "author": "MyJewishLearning.com", "author_handle": "myjewishlearning-com", "author_initials": "MY", "covertext": "One of the most difficult texts in the Haggadah is \"arami oved avi.\" This verse from Deuteronomy 26:5, translated as \"my...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/conversions/picture-248-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/picture-248.jpeg", "body": "One of the most difficult texts in the Haggadah is \"arami oved avi.\" This verse from Deuteronomy 26:5, translated as \"my father was a wandering Aramean,\" is part of the formula that was recited when the first fruit offerings were brought to the Temple in ancient times. The Haggadah includes the classic interpretation of the verse, reading it as \"an Aramean destroyed my father.\" Who is the Aramean mentioned in this ritual formula? In this article, the author looks at this verse, which is at the center of the Haggadah, alongside the verse's rabbinic interpretation--which differs dramatically from the Torah text--and the numerous commentaries surrounding it that have arisen over the centuries.\n\"They pour him a second cup, and here the child asks the parent [about what makes this night different]--and according to the child's understanding, the parent teaches, beginning with shame and concluding with praise, interpreting from arami oved avi ('My father was a wandering Aramean') until he finishes the entire passage\" (Mishnah Pesachim 10:4).\nThis passage in the Mishnah defines what is seen as the core of the Haggadah. The traditional Passover Haggadah includes a long section of midrash (rabbinic interpretation) in which the verses Deuteronomy 26:5-8 are dissected and associated with other verses and interpreted in light of the spiritual and political history of the Jewish people. The traditional text of this midrash begins:\n\"Come and learn what Laban the Aramean sought to do our father Jacob. For Pharaoh issued his edict against only the males, but Laban sought to uproot all, as it is said, 'An Aramean would have destroyed my father, and he went down to Egypt and he became there a nation, great, mighty and populous.'\" The Haggadah understands the word oved (wandering) as ibed (destroyed), changing the vocalization of the word. Read this way, Laban the Aramean destroyed my father, that is, Jacob. Of course, Laban did not destroy Jacob; they made a covenant not to kill each other. Consequently, Laban is usually seen as one who would have destroyed Jacob. It should be noted that while the great French commentator Rashi (1040-1105) accepts this reading, the Spanish commentator Ibn Ezra (1089-1164) strongly rejects it, noting the problem with the grammar and the non sequitur with \"and he went down to Egypt.\" According to Ibn Ezra, the verse refers to Jacob, who, when he was in Aram, was lost. Rashbam (c. 1085-1174) also rejects (his grandfather) Rashi's interpretation, but argues that the verse more appropriately applies to Abraham, who can correctly be identified as an Aramean. The following passages, drawn from commentaries to the Passover Haggadah, understand this passage about the Aramean as different kinds of threat to the people of Israel.\nGleanings: Deriving Intention\n\"An Aramean wanted to destroy my father.\" Since Laban did not actually succeed in doing evil to our father Jacob, we must derive his intentions from his words. He himself admitted, \"It is in my power to do harm to you\" (Genesis 31:29), and this shows his evil intention. Laban wanted to root out the whole, to kill the mother and child when he says \"The daughters are mine and their children are mine, and the flocks are mine, and all that you see is mine\" (Genesis 31:43), that is, they should be mine, if God had not prevented me. --Isaac ben Judah Abarbanel (1437-1508), Portuguese philosopher and scholar, from his commentary on the Haggadah, written in 1496 \nDestroying Jacob's Fatherhood\nAn Aramean wanted to destroy my fatherhood. When Laban said, \"The daughters are mine and their children are mine, and the flocks are mine,\" he wanted them to still be his and be called by his name. In this, he wanted to destroy Jacob's fatherhood, that is, his title of \"father.\" In truth [Rachel and Leah] had said \"Are we not as strangers to him (i.e., to our father, Laban)?\" that is, Laban no longer had the title of \"father\" over them. --Rav Tzadok haKohen of Lublin (1823-1900), Polish Hassidic Tzaddik, Sefer Dover Tzedek \nLaban vs. Pharaoh\nWhy does the Haggadah consider Laban worse than Pharaoh? Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt because Joseph was already there. Joseph had been sold by his brothers into Egypt because his brothers had envied the way their father favored their youngest brother, who was born in Jacob's old age. Joseph was born in Jacob's old age because Rachel's marriage had been delayed. Rachel's marriage had been delayed because Laban tricked Jacob by giving him Leah rather than Rachel as a wife. Had Jacob married Rachel first, Joseph would have been the firstborn and his brothers wouldn't have envied him and wouldn't have sold him into slavery. If he had not been sold into slavery, Jacob and his sons would not have gone down to Egypt. If they had not gone down to Egypt, their descendants would not have been enslaved under Pharaoh. We learn from all this that if it had not been for the act of deceit of Laban, there would not have been a Pharaoah as we know him. --R. Azriel Hildesheimer (1820-1899), German rabbi and educator, from his haggadah commentary, Hukkat HaPesach \nThe First Exile of Israel (i.e., Jacob)\nThe key to the Haggadah's midrash on arami oved avi is the covenant with Abraham cited earlier in the Haggadah, \"your seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them and they shall afflict them. Afterward they shall come out with great wealthand the fourth generation shall come here again\" (Genesis15:13-16). The language of the text--\"stranger (gerut),\" \"serve (avdut),\" and \"afflict (inuy)\"--applies not only to Israel, but to Jacob who lived in a strange land, served Laban, and was afflicted by him. Then Jacob left Laban's service with great wealth (and with Laban chasing after him), and his children (the fourth generation) returned to the land. Laban's persecution of Jacob confronts us with the image that this cycle of exile, persecution, and return predated our enslavement and redemption from Egypt and reinforces the Haggadah's message that redemption can and does recur in every generation. -- Devora Steinmetz, \"An Aramean in Every Generation\" (unpublished paper), Assistant Professor of Talmud, Jewish Theological Seminary of America \nHatred Without Reason\nHow can it say \"Pharaoh decreed against only the males\"? Does scripture not say, \"The enemy said:? I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them\" (Exodus 15:9)? Pharaoh wanted to destroy the whole! The Haggadah's intention is to say that in every generation there are those who stand against us and hate us without any reason. Consequently, the Haggadah does not recall the hatred of Esau, who had a reason to hate since Jacob took his blessing, and the pursuit by Pharaoh after Israel was in order to return them to Egypt; if they would not return, then he would make war against them. But Laban had no reason to hate Jacob who had done so much good for him, and similarly, Pharaoh's decree against the male children was without reason. --Rabbi Judah Loew (Maharal) of Prague, (1525-1609) Sefer Gevurot Hashem, 54, published in the Ostrog Haggadah \nStill Seeking Destruction\nAn Aramean destroys my father. The word oved is present tense and means destroys. Laban was always trying to destroy Jacob and even today, the forces that he represents are still seeking the destruction of Israel. --R. Zalman Sorotzkin (1881-1966), Lithuanian rabbi and communal leader, from his posthumously published Haggadah commentary, Sefer HaShir vehaShevach \nThe Enemy Within\nThe Haggadah teaches us through Laban's example that Jews ought to fear the enemy within as much or even more than the enemy without. While non-Jewish persecutors, such as Pharaoh, have taken their toll of Jewish lives throughout history, even more Jews have been lost through the blandishments of the Labans of the world. Those presumably close to us--our \"family\"--have caused more danger to the Jewish community through the scourge of assimilation. Their kiss has been the kiss of death. --Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, modern Orthodox rabbi and leader of the Jewish community of Efrat, The Passover Haggadah (KTAV, 1983) \nEvil Inclination\nI remember when I was a little child at the seder of [my grandfather], Rabbi Jacob Aryeh, I heard from his holy mouth concerning [the verse, \"an Aramean would have destroyed my father\"] that there are two kinds of yetzer hara (evil inclination). The first is like Esau; it kills through the temptation to sin, which causes a person to forfeit both this life and the life of the world to come. This is the common form, which affects average people. There is, however, another form of the yetzer hara that is like Laban the Aramean, which convinces a person that a mitzvah (a commandment) is a sin or that a sin is a mitzvah. And this kind of yetzer hara can come against even a tzaddik (a righteous person), since it comes through trickery (rama'ut, a pun on Aramean). And this is what the Haggadah means by saying that Laban wanted to uproot the whole, since this kind of yetzer hara can affect everyone, including the righteous. This is what I heard from my grandfather, and his face was lit up like a flame and he appeared like an angel. --Rabbi Jacob Aryeh ben Solomon Guterman of Radzymin (1792-1874), Polish Hassidic Tzaddik quoted by his grandson Aaron Menahem Mendel, Haggadah Commentary Tzemach Menahem \nShame to Praise\nIn Temple times, people would recite this passage from Deuteronomy when they brought their first fruits on Shavuot. The Mishnah describes its use in the seder as part of the teaching that proceeds from shame to praise. The shame is the desperation brought on by hunger; the root oved is the same as the root of the word in the second paragraph of the shema \"[if you stray from God,] the land will stop producing its fruit and you will quickly perish (v'avad'tem) off of the good land\" (Deuteronomy 11:17). \"My ancestors were starving Arameans.\" The person bringing the first fruits to the Temple in Jerusalem remembers the shame of the famine that led his ancestor Jacob and the Jewish people into slavery in Egypt and praises God for the redemption from Egypt and the restoration to the Land of Israel with its abundant harvest. The person at the seder recalls this hunger with his invitation, \"Let all who are in need, come and eat.\" And throughout Passover, we remind ourselves of our blessings by eating lehem oni, the bread of poverty. --Rabbi Roy Tanenbaum, Congregation Beth Tzedec, Toronto ", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Jeffrey Spitzer", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Commentary / Readings", "slug": "commentary-readings" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 249, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "An Aramean Destroyed My Father | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/aramean-destroyed-my-father", "og:title": "An Aramean Destroyed My Father | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "answering-four-children", "title": "Answering the Four Children", "author": "MyJewishLearning.com", "author_handle": "myjewishlearning-com", "author_initials": "MY", "covertext": "The Four Children section of the seder is among the more enigmatic passages of the Haggadah. In the following piece the...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/conversions/picture-248-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/picture-248.jpeg", "body": "The Four Children section of the seder is among the more enigmatic passages of the Haggadah. In the following piece the author imaginatively offers her thoughts on the meaning of this part of the seder.\n\nFour children came to seder. One was wise, one was wicked, one was simple, and one was silent.\n\nIt was seder night at long last. The family gathered around the table, and Zayde (Grandpa, in Yiddish) began reading the Haggadah. Suddenly one child was heard to ask in an undertone: \"What is going on here, anyway?\" At that point another child muttered: \"Yeah, what does all this mean to you? Let's eat already!\" Another child piped up: \"I know what is going on. I know what he is reading. I know everything about Pesach.\" The last child didn't say anything, but managed to look manifestly bored, as Zayde continued reading the Haggadah, oblivious to the murmuring.\n\nNo, that can't be how it happened. I'll try again.\n\nIt was seder night at long last. The family gathered around the table, and Zayde began reading the Haggadah. Suddenly one child interrupted: \"What are all these laws and customs and practices which God has given to you? I want to know.\" Zayde began to explain the intricacies of Pesach law, when there was another interruption: \"You tell us all these things, but what do they really mean to you, Zayde? Why do you still do them?\" And before Zayde could finish responding to this question, a third sibling interrupted: \"But what is really happening here tonight, Zayde?\" Zayde smiled and began to explain, waiting for the last child to interrupt. But that kid was too busy reading the commentaries in the Haggadah to ask anything at all.\n\nHmmm. I am not sure that that is the way it happened either.\n\nWhich Child Was Which?\n\nFour children there were at seder, one wise, one wicked, one simple, and one who did not know how to ask a question. But which child was which? Was the wise child smart--or a smart aleck? Was the wicked child bad--or challenging? Was the simple child really simple? And was the fourth child unable to ask a question--or unwilling to do so? Which one was which?\n\nFour children there were at the seder, and we all take it for granted that one was wise and one was wicked, one was simple, and one did not know how to ask. But imagine that a parent declared: \"I have four children: This one is the brain, this one the troublemaker, this one the dope and this one the silent.\" Would we let such a statement pass? Would we let a teacher get away with saying, \"I have four students, the brilliant one, the idiot, the loudmouth, and the one who never says a word?\" What is the Haggadah getting at?\n\nPerhaps the Haggadah deliberately provides caricatures of four types of children to teach us something about the care we must take when we answer questions. Each person at our seder is coming from a different place. This one is older and more experienced. That one has never been to seder before. That other one was sick and did not expect to make it to seder, but is there. That one never learned to read Hebrew, and that one knows French.\n\nBy telling us the story of the four children, each with a distinct question and each with a distinct answer, the Haggadah is telling us to accept each person where they are and to begin from there. The questions that are asked must be addressed, and the questions that are not asked must be addressed.\n\nThe Responsibility of Responding\n\nHow we answer questions is a big responsibility. Try, for example, reading the story of the four children backward, with the answers preceding the questions. The story then becomes a demonstration of how our approach to answering questions can so strongly influence the kinds of questions that will be asked in the future. An open sharing of knowledge, such as is offered to the \"wise\" child, encourages more questions, more searching, and this is possible at any age and any level of learning. Defensiveness and belligerence--such as is offered to the \"wicked\" child, encourages belligerence at best and complete turn-off at worst.\n\nSimple explanations encourage simple thinking; even simple questions often have complex answers, and ignorance is not the same as stupidity. And, always beginning the discussion for a child will prevent the child from learning how to ask. Too often, our categorizations of children become self-fulfilling prophesies, because of the power of our responses to influence future behavior. (I want to thank Uri Sobel for this insight.)\n\nDifferent Renderings\n\nOne of my favorite activities at the seder was to pass out different Haggadot and to compare illustrations of the Four Children. Depictions of the wicked child are particularly interesting. Many Haggadot render the wicked child as a knight or a soldier. It is not hard to realize where that image came from. Haggadot from the early part of this century often depict the wicked child as a gambler or a gangster, complete with a cigar. A kibbutz Haggadah shows the wicked child as a city dweller. A communist Haggadah shows the wicked child as a business man.\n\nIn introducing the tale of the four children, the Haggadah says: \"k'neged arba banim dibra Torah.\" This is usually translated as: \"the Torah alludes to four children.\" But perhaps it could also be rendered as: \"The Torah speaks against the notion that there are four children.\" One illustration that I find particularly meaningful comes from the Haggadah put out by the Rabbinical Assembly, and it shows paper cutouts of four bigger people with four littler people within. One cannot tell which child is which. As I see it, this illustration interprets the Haggadah to be teaching us that we are composite people. Sometimes we are this and sometimes we are that.\n\nEach one of us contains aspects of each child; each one of us is sometimes wise and sometimes wicked, sometimes simple and sometimes silent. We are the four children. As such we ask questions and we provide answers, different answers for different needs.\n\n\n", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Rabbi Miriam Spitzer", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "-- Four Children", "slug": "four-children" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 235, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Answering the Four Children | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/answering-four-children", "og:title": "Answering the Four Children | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "four-children-history", "title": "Four Children: A History", "author": "MyJewishLearning.com", "author_handle": "myjewishlearning-com", "author_initials": "MY", "covertext": "K'neged arba banim dibra Torah--the Torah speaks of four children. We might be forgiven for thinking that this section o...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/conversions/picture-248-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/picture-248.jpeg", "body": "K'neged arba banim dibra Torah--the Torah speaks of four children. We might be forgiven for thinking that this section of the Haggadah is a quote from the Torah, and indeed, the familiar story of the four children asking questions about Pesach does include many quotations from the Torah. But the passage itself is an adaptation of texts found not in the Torah, but rather in the Mekhilta, a midrash from the time of the Tannaim (first and second centuries C.E.), and in the Jerusalem Talmud (Yerushalmi).\n<h3>Reversing the Answers</h3>\nInterestingly, the version in the Yerushalmi contains some significant differences from the version we find in our Haggadot. (Though we might think that our Haggadah would be closer to the later Yerushalmi version, instead it more closely resembles the earlier Mekhilta version).\nFrom the Yerushalmi: \"The Torah speaks of four children. One is wise, one is wicked, one is foolish (tipesh), and one does not know how to ask questions. The wise child asks: What are the testimonies, statutes, and ordinances which the Lord our God has commanded us to do? And you should respond: with a mighty fist has the Lord rescued us from the bondage of Egypt (Exodus 13:14).\"\nWe know that answer: It is the one given to the simple child in our Haggadah!\nMeanwhile, in the Yerushalmi: \"The foolish child asks mah zot, what is all this? And you should: 'teach him the laws of Passover, that they do not end [with] afikoman [M 10:8]. What is afikoman? That one should not get up from one fellowship and join another fellowship [as was customary in after-dinner revelry gatherings].\" (Translation, Baruch Bokser.)\nThat answer, too, is familiar to us--as the answer our Haggadot offer for the wise child.\nHow is it that the Yerushalmi has confused the answers of the wise and the simple children? Or is it the Haggadah that has confused the two?\nThe implication in our Haggadah is that since the wise child has asked an excellent and intelligent question, he or she is treated to a lengthy explanation of the laws of Pesach, including the laws of afikoman. The answer is meant to be a compliment; perhaps such a child is even to be told laws known only to the scholars, the best and the brightest. On the other hand, even though similar words are used, the implication of the answer to the foolish child in the Yerushalmi is that he or she is too ignorant even to know the rules of the afikoman. We have to explain it to the foolish child.\nTimes change, generations change, places change, expectations change. An answer that is regarded as foolish and simple in Israel in the early years of the Common Era is regarded as considered and wise in medieval and modern times.\n<h3>More Differences & Similarities</h3>\nNor is that the only difference between the story of the four children as we know it in the Haggadah and the much earlier version in the Yerushalmi; there are many. For example, in the Yerushalmi the wise child asks what the Lord our God has commanded us, while most Haggadot follow the Mekhilta version and have the wise child asking what the Lord our God has commanded you, sparking many a discussion about the differences between the wise and the wicked children.\nSome modern Haggadot, such as the Feast of Freedom, return to the version of the Yerushalmi. It does make the difference between the wise child and the wicked child much clearer.\nA the same time, the renditions of both the wicked child and the one who does not know how to ask are fairly similar in the Yerushalmi, in the Mekhilta, and in our Haggadah, at least in implication if not in precise language. But the differences in the precise language are also interesting. The Haggadah reads:\n\"The wicked child asks: 'what is all this work to you?' S/he says to you and not to him. Thus s/he separates her/himself from the community and denies the point of it all. You should set her/his teeth on edge (hak'he et shinav) and tell her/him that God did this for me when I went out of Egypt, for me and not for her/him. Had s/he been there, s/he would not have been redeemed.\"\nThe phrase hak'he et shinav is particularly remarkable. It is an odd phrase, usually translated as \"setting the teeth on edge,\"--that is, making the child very uncomfortable. This bears some resemblance to a passage from Jeremiah 31:28, that in the future days no longer will parents eat vinegar and set the teeth of the children on edge. But literally it might mean to punch the child in the mouth, thus getting the child's attention rather dramatically. Furthermore, that phrase does not appear in the Yerushalmi, and while it does appear in some printed version of the mekilta, it is not found in the manuscript versions. Perhaps it was even retroactively put into the printed mekilta to make the text accord with the familiar Haggadah.\nAgain, times change and later generations apparently found the need to be clearer and more graphic in the treatment of the wicked child. The passage without the phrase \"hak'he et shinav\" did not censure the wicked child strongly enough.\n<h3>Modern Questions</h3>\nModern Haggadot bring other questions to the story. Perhaps the four children represent four generations of American Jews (Riskin). Perhaps every one of us is in reality all four of these children (Feast of Freedom, and others). Perhaps the four children represent questions asked at different ages and life positions (Prince of Egypt Haggadah). Maybe we should be worried about a fifth child – the one who does not show up at seder at all (Hartman).\nThe passage begins: \"k'neged arba banim dibra Torah,\" the Torah speaks of four children. But this passage is not a quote from the Torah and it has grown, changed, and developed over the years, each generation finding meaning in the text as they found it.", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Rabbi Miriam Spitzer", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "-- Four Children", "slug": "four-children" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 304, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Four Children: A History | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/four-children-history", "og:title": "Four Children: A History | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "counting-omer", "title": "Counting the Omer", "author": "MyJewishLearning.com", "author_handle": "myjewishlearning-com", "author_initials": "MY", "covertext": "The omer refers to the forty-nine day period between the second night of Passover (Pesach) and the holiday of Shavuot....", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/conversions/picture-248-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/picture-248.jpeg", "body": "The omer refers to the forty-nine day period between the second night of Passover (Pesach) and the holiday of Shavuot. This period marks the beginning of the barley harvest when, in ancient times, Jews would bring the first sheaves to the Temple as a means of thanking God for the harvest. The word omer literally means \"sheaf\" and refers to these early offerings.\n\nThe Torah itself dictates the counting of the seven weeks following Pesach:\n\n\"You shall count from the eve of the second day of Pesach, when an omer of grain is to be brought as an offering, seven complete weeks. The day after the seventh week of your counting will make fifty days, and you shall present a new meal offering to God (Lev 23:15-16).\"\n\nIn its biblical context, this counting appears only to connect the first grain offering to the offering made at the peak of the harvest. As the holiday of Shavuot became associated with the giving of the Torah, and not only with a celebration of agricultural bounty, the omer period began to symbolize the thematic link between Peach and Shavuot.\n\nWhile Pesach celebrates the initial liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, Shavuot marks the culmination of the process of liberation, when the Jews became an autonomous community with their own laws and standards. Counting up to Shavuot reminds us of this process of moving from a slave mentality to a more liberated one.\n\nWhen to Count the Omer\n\nThe counting of the omer begins on the second night of Pesach. Jews in the Diaspora generally integrate this counting into the second seder. \n\nThe omer is counted each evening after sundown. The counting of the omer is generally appended to the end of Ma'ariv (the evening service), as well.\n\nWhat to Say...and What Not to Say\n\nOne stands when counting the omer, and begins by reciting the following blessing:\n\nBarukh ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh ha'Olam asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav v'tizivanu al sefirat ha'omer.\n\nBlessed are you, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who has sanctified us with your commandments and commanded us to count the omer.\n\nAfter the blessing, one recites the appropriate day of the count. For example:\n\nHayom yom echad la'omer\n\nToday is the first day of the omer.\n\nAfter the first six days, one also includes the number of weeks that one has counted. For example:\n\nHayom sh'losha asar yom, she'hem shavuah echad v'shisha yamim la'omer\n\nToday is thirteen days, which is one week and six days of the omer\n\nThe inclusion of both the day (thirteen) and the week (one week and six days) stems from a rabbinic argument about whether the <a href=\"http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Torah.shtml\">Torah</a> mandates counting days or weeks. On the one hand, the biblical text instructs, \"you shall count fifty days;\" on the other hand, the text also says to \"count. . . seven complete weeks.\" The compromise position, manifested in the ritual, is to count both days and weeks.\n\nThe blessing for counting the omer, as well as the language for each day of counting, appears in most prayer books at the end of the text for the evening service.\n\nBecause the blessing should precede the counting (and not the other way around), many Jews will not say what day of the omer it is until after the ritual counting. Thus, the reminder about what day to count is often phrased as \"yesterday was the fifth day of the omer.\"\n\nMany people precede the counting of the omer with a meditation that states one's intention to fulfill the commandment. This meditation serves to focus the individual on the task at hand and to remind him/her of the biblical basis of the commandment:\n\nHineni muchan um'zuman l'kayem mitzvat aseh shel s'firat ha'omer k'mo shekatuv baTorah: Us'fartem lakhem mimaharat hashabbat miyom havi'echem et omer hat'nufa, sheva shabbatot t'mimot tihiyenah. Ad mimaharat hashabbat hash'vi'it tisp'ru chamishim yom.\n\nBehold, I am ready and prepared to fulfill the mitzvah of counting the omer, as it says in the Torah: You shall count from the eve of the second day of Pesach, when an omer of grain is to be brought as an offering, seven complete weeks. The day after the seventh week of your counting will make fifty days.\n\nWhoops. . .\n\nOne rabbinic debate considers whether there is one cohesive mitzvah to count seven weeks and fifty days or whether each night of counting constitutes a separate mitzvah. This debate would seem immaterial, if not for the proscription against reciting a blessing \"in vain\"--that is, not for the purpose of doing a mitzvah.\n\nIf there is a separate mitzvah to count each night, then forgetting one night would have no effect on one's ability to count subsequent nights. If, however, there is one collective mitzvah to count the entire period, then missing one night disrupts the entire count.\n\nThe rabbis effectively split the difference, and conclude that a person who forgets to count the omer on a particular night may count the next morning without reciting a blessing, and then may continue counting as usual--with a blessing--that night.\n\n\n\n\n", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Rabbi Jill Jacobs", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Commentary / Readings", "slug": "commentary-readings" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 393, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Counting the Omer | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/counting-omer", "og:title": "Counting the Omer | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "afikomen", "title": "Afikomen", "author": "MyJewishLearning.com", "author_handle": "myjewishlearning-com", "author_initials": "MY", "covertext": "At the Passover seder table, three matzahs are placed in a stack. Near the beginning of the seder, the middle matzah is...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/conversions/picture-248-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/picture-248.jpeg", "body": "At the <a href=\"http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Passover/The_Seder.shtml\">Passover seder</a> table, three <a href=\"http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Passover/The_Seder/Matzah.shtml\">matzahs</a> are placed in a stack. Near the beginning of the seder, the middle matzah is broken in two pieces, and the larger piece of this matzah is called the afikomen. It is saved to be eaten after the meal. \nMany families have the custom of hiding the afikomen--either the parents hide it and the children search for it, or the children hide it and parents search. A prize is often given to whoever locates this important piece of matzah. The seder cannot continue until the afikomen has been located and consumed.\n<div>\n<div> </div>\n</div>\n\n \n", "cliptype": "image", "clipsource": "Unknown", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/clips/7397/afikomen-hp_0.jpg", "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": "https://assets.haggadot.com/clips/7397/conversions/afikomen-hp_0-cover.jpg", "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Yachatz", "slug": "yachatz" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 336, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Afikomen | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/afikomen", "og:title": "Afikomen | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/clips/7397/conversions/afikomen-hp_0-cover.jpg" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "what-does-dayenu-mean-today", "title": "What Does 'Dayenu' Mean Today? ", "author": "MyJewishLearning.com", "author_handle": "myjewishlearning-com", "author_initials": "MY", "covertext": "by Joshua Ratner, Rabbis Without Borders One of my favorite parts of the Passover seder is the singing that takes place...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/conversions/picture-248-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104223/picture-248.jpeg", "body": "by Joshua Ratner, Rabbis Without Borders\n\nOne of my favorite parts of the Passover seder is the singing that takes place after we finish eating. There are so many great, fun songs, from “Ehad Mi Yodeah” to \"Chad Gadya.\"Perhaps my favorite song is “Dayenu.” The words are fairly easy to sing in Hebrew, and the chorus is so catchy that even those who don’t know Hebrew can easily join in. But beyond its functionality, the content of Dayenu (literally “it would have been enough”) also carries a deep amount of wisdom.\n\nDayenu consists of 15 stanzas referencing different historical contexts the Israelites experienced, from slavery in Egypt to the building of the Temple in Israel. After each stanza, we sing the chorus, signifying that if this was the total of God’s miraculous intervention into the lives of the Israelites, it would have been sufficient.\n\nOne of the primary purposes of the Passover seder is to make us feel as if we personally experienced the exodus from Egypt and the redemption from slavery to freedom. This is no less true for the way we understand the Dayenu song. Dayenu provides a powerful contemporary hashkafah (outlook on life), a call to mindfulness about the way we currently lead our lives. We live in an era when capitalism is our state (and increasingly global) religion. Consumption is unfettered by any internal sense of restraint, from the amount of soda we can drink to how much money Wall Street executives can make. We live in a world where it is okay that the richest 85 people in the world have total wealth equal to that of the poorest 3.5 billion people on the planet!\n\nDayenu reminds us that there is another way. Judaism offers an outlook on wealth, consumption, and sufficiency (sova) that is very counter-cultural. InPirkei Avot(Ethics of our Fathers) 4:1, Ben Zoma teaches: “Who is rich? The one who is content with what one has.” Even more austere, the Talmud instructs: “An individual who can eat barley bread but eats wheat bread is guilty of transgressing the law of bal tashchit (unlawful waste). Rabbi Papa states: one who can drink beer but drinks wine instead is guilty of transgressing the law of bal tashchit.” (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 140b). Judaism is not, to be sure, an ascetic religion. We are encouraged to carve out occasions for excess, for enjoying the finer parts of living—on Shabbat, holidays, and other joyous occasions. But the wisdom of Judaism is that, if we want to experience delight on these special occasions, we also need moments of restraint. It is the juxtaposition of restraint and largess that creates a life of meaning.\n\nBeyond the individual experience, we also are becoming increasingly aware of the global consequences of championing unbridled materialism over a sense of sufficiency. From income inequality to climate change, our refusal to entertain limits on what we do and how much we consume are wreaking destructive consequences. By returning to a sense of Dayenu, of thinking deeply about what is enough, we have the potential to change ourselves and our world. May we be blessed, on this Pesah and beyond, to replace the idolatry of consumption with an embrace of all that we have.\n\nHag Sameach!\n", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Joshua Ratner, Rabbis Without Borders", "featured": 1, "featuredIn": { "title": "A Haggadah for Justice ", "slug": "haggadah-justice", "author": "Haggadot" }, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "-- Cup #2 & Dayenu", "slug": "cup-2-amp-dayenu" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 369, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "What Does 'Dayenu' Mean Today? | Passover haggadah by MyJewishLearning.com", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. 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Haggadah Section: Motzi-Matzah

The holiday of Passover has a complex set of rules regarding what may be eaten. Since one is obliged to eat matzah on Passover, it is no surprise that much has been written about matzah, not only when to eat, it but how much must be eaten and who must fulfill this obligation. This article looks at a number of texts dealing with the intricacies of consuming matzah on Passover.

When Is One Obligated to Eat Matzah?

The command to eat matzah appears ten times in the Torah. Nine times the command is for seven days, "Seven days shall you eat matzah" (Exodus 12:15). The tenth time, however, says, "Six days you shall eat unleavened bread" (Deuteronomy 16:8).

A simple and obvious statement of the law (which did not, however, become the accepted practice) is stated by the tanna (rabbi of the Mishnaic era) R. Shimon, originally in the Sifre Deuteronomy (a Tannaitic Midrash):

"Has it not already been said, 'Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread'? Then why does the Torah say 'You shall eat no leavened bread ( hametz ) with it'? When one is obligated to eat matzah, there is also a prohibition against hametz; when there is no obligation to eat matzah, there is no prohibition against hametz" (Bavli Pesachim 28b, cf. Sifre Deuteronomy 130).

The obligation to eat matzah and the prohibition against hametz are co-extensive. Since the prohibition against hametz is clearly for seven days, the obligation to eat matzah, according to Rabbi Shimon, also lasts seven days. This is also the approach of the apocryphal book of Jubilees, and is also the custom of the Karaites and the Samaritans, groups that broke off from the main body of the people of Israel. The most common rabbinic interpretation of the verse from Deuteronomy that prescribes six days rejects this early understanding:

"One verse says, 'Seven days you shall eat matzah,' and one verse says, 'Six days you shall eat matzah.' How can both of these verses be maintained? The seventh day was included (in the first verse) but then excluded (from the second verse). That which is excluded from a more inclusive statement is meant to teach us about the whole statement. So, just as on the seventh day it is optional ( r'shut ), so all the other days, it is optional. Does this mean that it is optional on the first night too? The verse 'In the first month, on the fourteenth day in the evening, you shall eat matzah' (Exodus 12:18) fixes it as an obligation ( hovah ) to eat matzah on the first night" (Mekhilta, Pischa 8).

According to this midrash, Deuteronomy refers to the first six days, and accordingly, the seventh day of the holiday has no obligation to eat matzah. But since there is no essential difference between the seventh day and any of the other days, the rabbis argue, what is true of the seventh day must be true of all of the days. Therefore, there is no general obligation to eat matzah throughout the holiday. On the other hand, the explicit verse from Exodus 12:18 does create a requirement to eat matzah on the first night. Outside of the land of Israel, Jews who observe two days of the holiday are rabbinically obligated to eat matzah at each of the seders, but not on the other days of the festival.

How Much Matzah is One Supposed to Eat?

During the seder, one makes two different blessings over the matzah. The first blessing is hamotzi ("…who brings forth bread from the earth"), which is recited whenever one eats bread, and which is obligatory at any festival meal. The second blessing recalls the particular obligation to eat matzah ("…who has sanctified us with the commandments and commanded us concerning the eating of matzah"). In general, when one is obligated to eat something, the standard amount is a volume equivalent to that of an olive, a k'zayit.

How should one fulfill this obligation to eat matzah? Hamotzi on other festivals is usually said on a whole loaf of challah, so on Passover should one eat the olive's-bulk of matzah from the top of the three matzot on the seder plate, which is still whole and is therefore analogous to a loaf? Or should one eat from the middle, broken matzah for the fulfillment of the obligation to eat matzah?

Joseph Karo writing in the standard code of Jewish law, the Shulhan Arukh, predictably requires a bulk of matzah equivalent to two olives:

"One washes one's hands and makes the blessing and takes the matzot... in hand and makes the blessings 'hamotzi' and 'on eating matzah.' Then one breaks from the top, complete matzah and the broken middle piece, both together... One eats an olive's bulk from each of them while reclining. If one cannot eat matzah equivalent to the bulk of two olives together, eat the one for hamotzi first and then the one [for the blessing] on eating matzah. Then one takes an olive's bulk of bitter herbs... and makes the blessing on eating bitter herbs and eats it without reclining. Then one takes the third matzah and breaks a piece from it to wrap with the bitter herbs" (Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayyim 475:1).

Modern authorities have debated whether the air pockets in matzah count toward measuring an olive's bulk, and most say that they do not. They also have debated about whether an olive's bulk is really the size of a modern olive, or whether it is actually the bulk of an egg. That makes a single "olive's bulk" equivalent to approximately two-thirds of a standard, machine-made matzah or the area equivalent to an average adult hand of hand-made matzah. In addition, modern authorities also define a time limit within which one should, ideally, consume the matzah.

Is All Matzah the Same?

In order for dough to become matzah, it must at least have the potential to leaven. According to the rabbis, leavening ( himutz ) only occurs when flour from the five grains (wheat, oats, barley, rye, or spelt) is moistened with water (by their definition). Flour that is moistened with wine, oil, honey, eggs, or fruit juice does not leaven; the fermentation that occurs is called sirchon (rotting). Despite the negative category name, sirchon is different leavening, which is the category with which the Passover prohibitions are concerned.

Therefore, the matzah-like product made with flour and apple juice that is called "egg matzah" or matzah ashirah (rich matzah) is not subject to leavening, just "rotting," and is theoretically acceptable for Passover use. Widespread custom, however, rejected its use. The Ashkenazic (East European) authority, R. Moses Isserles (known as the Rema), however, is wary of this permission and gives the custom legal force:

"Eggs and other liquids are all considered like fruit juice (which lead to rotting, not leavening). Rema: But in our communities, we do not knead (matzah) dough with fruit juice... And one should not change from this unless in a time of emergency for the sake of a sick or old person who needs this" (Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayyim 462:4).

The Ashkenazic restrictions on use of "egg matzah" are usually printed on the box. Even according to Sephardic (Mediterranean) practice, however, one cannot fulfill the obligation to eat matzah at seder with "egg matzah." First, the obligation must be fulfilled with real matzah, and real matzah must have the potential to leaven, which egg matzah does not. Second, the command is to eat "matzah, the bread of poverty" (Deuteronomy 16:3) and not egg matzah, which is also known as rich matzah.

An additional concern comes from the Torah's command, "You shall watch the matzot" (Exodus 12:17). This is understood by the midrash as "watch it so that it does not become unfit" (Mekhilta Pischa 9), that is, it should not be allowed to leaven. When one begins to watch the dough is a matter of some controversy. The earliest sources assume that the watching begins with the kneading of the dough. The common practice today is to watch the flour from time it is ground. Most commercial matzah is watched from the time of grinding.

The most strict approach, however, is to watch the grain itself from the time it is harvested.

"[Rava] said to those who were turning over the sheaves of wheat (during the harvest): 'When you flip them over, do so for the sake of the mitzvah.' From this we can reason that watching is required initially from the beginning to the end" (Bavli Pesachim 40a).

Matzah made from flour ground from grain which has been watched since harvest is called shemurah matzah (watched matzah). Many Jews choose to use shemurah matzah, especially hand-made shemurah matzah, for fulfillment of the obligation to eat matzah at the seder.

Who is Obligated to Eat Matzah?

The eating of matzah is a positive commandment (as opposed to not eating hametz, which is a negative commandment) that takes place at a specific time. There is a general rule in talmudic literature that women are exempt from positive commandments that take place at a specific time (Mishnah Kiddushin 1:7). Indeed, women are exempt from reciting the shema, wearing tefillin (both in Mishnah Berakhot 3:3), sitting in the sukkah (Mishnah Sukkah 2:8), shaking the lulav, blowing the shofar, and wearing tzitzit (all three in Bavli Kiddushin 33b).

On the other hand, women are obligated to observe other positive, time-specified commandments such as fasting on Yom Kippur (Bavli Sukkah 28a), lighting Hanukkah candles (Bavli Shabbat 23a), reciting the megillah on Purim (Bavli Megillah 4a), and eating three meals on Shabbat (Rabbenu Nissim on Shabbat 44a). Based on the association of not eating hametz with the positive command of eating matzah (akin to the midrash of Rabbi Shimon, above), women are also obligated to eat matzah at the seders (Bavli Pesachim 43b). For that matter, women are also obligated to drink the four cups of wine (Bavli Pesachim 108a-b), to recite the Haggadah, and to chant the Hallel (psalms of praise) at the seder (Mishnah Berurah 472:14).

Source:

Jeffrey Spitzer

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