In 1985, the year after my dad died, my mom asked me to lead the Seder she’d prepared for the two of us and a few relatives. I don’t remember where my siblings were. At the time, I’d recently begun keeping kosher. I was trying to do things according to Halacha, according to Jewish law, and I was annoyed.

Just like we’d always done it, my mom wanted to start the Seder at around five in the afternoon, when it’s supposed to begin after dark. The turkey wasn’t kosher. The dishes weren’t right. My dad was dead. Everything felt wrong, very screwed up.

After my mom went off to bed, I made my own Seder, my own sad little thing,  cleaned up a bit, and went for a walk.

I was living in Hell’s Kitchen in New York City then, and walking down my old suburban street in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota felt almost foreign. I was gloomy, dark. The whole world felt that way.

As I passed my friend Blair’s house, I saw his mom vacuuming. It was well past midnight. Who vacuums that late? And worse, who vacuums on Passover, when you’re not supposed to use electricity?

But then, as sometimes happens, a new thought, a better one, overtook the lesser one: Jews. These Jews. My mom. Blair’s family. People all around the world. They were still eating matzo, still drinking their four cups, still reading from the Haggadah. We’ve been doing this for thirty-three hundred years, recalling the Exodus, retelling the story of freedom and renewal.

And suddenly something shifted. I thought, this is unbelievable, and it’s still going on, right here on my own block.

What struck me then, and even more today over forty years later, is the wonder of this civilizational continuity, this people whose existence can only be explained by a shrug of the shoulders and an “I don’t know, I can’t understand it.” I no longer hesitate to call it a miracle.

But I also understand my ability to sit here and type these words as a miracle. These thoughts in my head rendered into symbols, transmitted through invisible waves that, if you’re reading them, enter your mind. I see miracles everywhere. I have trained myself over many decades to see them, to look beyond mundane explanations for things.

A little history on Passover, (or Pesach in Hebrew), which also happens to be the first of my two Hebrew names. The other being Mordechai, the protagonist from the holiday of Purim. I understand myself and the Jewish people more broadly, as having been saved and elevated by the miracles of both holidays: the reversal of the wicked Haman’s plot to kill the Jews in ancient Persia, present-day Iran, and the liberation of the Hebrews from cruelty and enslavement in Egypt.

Days before the liberation of the enslaved Jewish people, they were commanded by God, through Moses, to take a sheep and bring it into their home. A strange request, perhaps. It bears noting that the Egyptians, the most powerful civilization on earth at the time, believed that sheep were gods. They were revered, prayed to. The idea that the Jews, mere slaves, would commit an act of rebellion so dangerous, so openly disdainful to their masters, was unthinkable.

When asked what they were doing with the sheep, they answered boldly: We are going to slaughter them and sacrifice them to God, the Creator of heaven and earth.

In other words, they had had enough. Enough torment, enough torture, enough living in a world of lies and idolatry. At that moment, they crossed a kind of cosmic Rubicon. In response, God acted as well, bringing into the world the possibility for mortals, acting through natural means, to shape their own destiny and transcending the limits of the physical world.

I ask you: Have you not seen miracles in your own life? Have you not been jolted out of a kind of reverie by things and experiences you could not explain?

Today, we wrestle with things beyond our understanding. We see things vast and frightening, seemingly beyond reason, and for many, beyond hope. We read the news. We speak of politicians with praise or disdain. We speak of the effects of war, of doubt and uncertainty. We ask, where is the logic? We give our own answers. We speak with a certainty we neither possess nor find the least bit satisfying.

Passover itself denotes transcendence. Leaving one’s limitations. Leaping beyond the ordinary. For eight days, Passover requires us to eat only unleavened bread, the bread of faith, the bread of healing, and most commonly, the bread of humility. Humility as a form of surrender.

When we hear the word surrender, many of us recoil. Never. I have understanding. I have agency. Yes, of course you do. We all do, and we must never surrender that. But surrender in this instance means that after we’ve reached the limits of our intellect, our physical strength, and our emotional strength, we turn with humility to the Source of All. The Creator.

Not only the season, but that moment in history, that turning point, where solutions based on logic alone are sought but never quite found, where ideas, even those proffered by so-called experts, are never enough.

Humility is required. Liberation from the idols of the moment is required. From lust for wealth, from fear of public opinion, from status-seeking, from trading timeless wisdom for the dross of popular culture, and from baseless hatred.

As I enter the holiday of Passover, I will consider what steps I will take, what “sheep” I will bring into my home, tie to my bedpost, and which of my own idolatries I will disavow.

What will spur me on to that end?

The knowledge that my forebears celebrated Passover for over 3,300 years. The pride and gratitude I feel for Jewish continuity. Watching my children and grandchildren follow in my footsteps. And the memory of my small personal Seder, as I walked down my old street, watching my friend Blair’s mother vacuum her rug, knowing that however it was done, Passover was still being observed.

Remembering too how I shrugged off my resentments then, and came to understand that the actions we take, from the illuminated prayers of the holiest of us to biting into a piece of unleavened bread, are all means toward hope.

Toward the beautiful things in store for all humanity.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)