Reflections on Exodus and redemption

Hebrew scholar and Jewish academic Irene Lancaster explains the meaning of Pesach and the Seder for Jews: 

In his Easter message, the King said: ‘The love [Jesus] showed when he walked the Earth reflected the Jewish ethic of caring for the stranger and people in need…’

This is a reminder that the Pesach week that we are only celebrating, ending on Monday night, would have been celebrated annually by Jesus and his family, with all the time room for one or two guests. 

The Seder commemorates many things, but mainly the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt, which took place around 3500 years ago, in 1440 BCE.

This Pesach has been unusual in falling on Saturday night, straight after Shabbat HaGadol, the Great Shabbat. On this present day, the last chapter of the last Hebrew prophet, Malachi, is read (3:4-24 within the Hebrew version).

Here Malachi pronounces the good and terrible Day of the Lord, preceded by the approaching back to earth of the prophet Elijah, whose mission is to reconcile children to their parents, with the intention to prevent total devastation.

This is an odd intervention which perfectly describes the family Seder and all its dynamics. And through the Seder, in addition to the 4 cups of wine we drink, an additional cup is poured for the prophet Elijah, who is predicted through the night, and the following day the Elijah cup is mysteriously found empty.

On Sunday morning our first sermon also featured Elijah, but this time in 1 Kings 18:21. Here he’s on Mount Carmel, facing the prophets of Baal, with the now proverbial query: ‘how long will you halt between two opinions?’ The word for ‘halt’ is ‘psach’ which, in addition to meaning ‘omit’, (as in Exodus 12), also signifies ‘limping along’ or ‘sitting on the fence.’ Will the people selected to desert Baal completely, or proceed to follow him when it suits them? Are they capable of creating up their minds?

In similar fashion, will the slaves ‘skip and jump’ into their latest role as free people, once G-d passes over their homes and spares them from the slaying of the first-born Egyptians, or will they generally revert to their former slavish attitudes and ‘drag their feet’?

We see that on their 40 12 months journey to the Promised Land the freed slaves often hark back to the great old days in Egypt, where they were not less than told what to do and didn’t should make decisions for themselves. 

This is what we remember on the Seder Table as we narrate the story of our Exodus, using the Haggadah, which implies ‘the telling’. This is where families are brought back together again, as anticipated in Malachi’s final prophecy and discuss our people’s story.

Pesach all the time takes place in spring, often in April, as this 12 months. In 1922, as Hitler wrote ‘Mein Kampf’, calling for the destruction of the Jewish people, TS Eliot published his poem, ‘The Waste Land’, which incorporates the road: ‘April is the cruelest month … mixing memory and desire.’ Something may be said for this description. April in Israel may be boiling hot, with dry, hamsin winds, but additionally cold, stormy and even snowy. The UK weather, if more temperate, can also be unpredictable at Pesach time.

But nevertheless, the French Bible commentator, Rashi, (1040-1105), interpreting Exodus 13:4, states: ‘See how kind G-d is. He took you out in a month that’s suitable for venturing out, that’s neither too hot, too cold, nor too rainy.’

Incidentally, Rashi’s home town of Troyes within the Champagne wine area of France, is currently forecasting rain for the week, so he obviously spoke from personal experience!

But possibly Robert Browning summed it up best. In 1845, from northern Italy, where he had made his home, he wrote of his nostalgia for England: 

‘Oh to be in England, now that April’s there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning, unaware,

That the bottom boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings within the orchard boughIn England -now!’

No surprise, due to this fact, that at the tip of the festival we read the Song of Songs, also celebrating the onset of spring and its manifestations in nature.

So, as we batten down the hatches, following the recommendation of the Met Office, allow us to cherish all those high quality April days that live as much as the springs that could be. And allow us to ponder the primary Exodus of the Jewish people, going down 3,500 years ago, along side so many others all over the world. 

The spring month of Aviv (also referred to as Nisan) is ‘the primary of the months’, and due to this fact symbolizes death and resurrection – the death of slavery and the rebirth of the Jewish people, in addition to hope.

During the three,500 years of our existence as a people coming out of slavery, we’ve got never once forgotten that we were slaves, and that only miracles and divine interventions have pulled us out of our torpor until we truly ‘grow to be a free people in our own land,’ in addition to ‘a lightweight unto the nations’. 

Naturally due to this fact, at Seders all around the Jewish world, families have been remembering the hostages, in addition to all those brave people, Jews and non-Jews alike, who did their utmost to free them and can carry on doing so.

As the King said today: ‘The love [Jesus] showed when he walked the Earth reflected the Jewish ethic of caring for the stranger and people in need ….’