INTRO/ PASSOVER
Passover Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibFbdDiQ1CU
Passover True or False (Below)
The real reason for Elijah’s cup
HEBREW
Read Raban Gamliel (part of the Haggadah)
Parsha
https://www.bimbam.com/metzorah/
PASSOVER CUSTOMS TRUE OR FALSE
1. French Jews eat matzo aux rillettes de canard, matzah dipped in shredded duck fat at the seder, in memory of the birds eaten after crossing the yam-suf/ sea of reeds.
2. Hassidic Jews, including Chabad, don’t eat anything where matza is soaked or wetted with liquid of any kind. No matzo ball soup. No Matzo Pizza.
3. Sefaridic Jews eat thicker soft matzo only, never boxed Matza.
4. Jews from Bagdad, Iraq have a tradition of auctioning off the hard boiled egg on the seder plate right after the start of the seder- the one who pledges the most tzedakah gets to eat the egg before the meal, everyone else has to wait to eat.
5. Jews from Morocco have a part in the seder where they walk around with the matza in a sack on their backs.
6. Many jews with ancestors from Poland or Russia don’t eat legumes- peas, beans, or peanuts on Passover.
7. Reform Jews say you can eat bread on all but the first day of Peasch.
8. -Chabad communities avoid any fruits or vegetables with peels on Passover.
9. Ethiopian Jews hold seder under a giant tent they often build indoors as a reminder of wandering in the wilderness.
10. The Jews of Yemen don’t have a seder plate, but often cover the table in herbs, lettuces, bottles of wine and so on.
11. The jews of Jerusalem make their matzo in special ovens fired by olive wood, which burns at nearly 800 F.
12. Most American Jews skip the 2nd half of the seder, including the parts of the meal where we thank God for our food and many of the best songs.
13. Many jews in the Chavurah movement fill Elijah’s cup at the seder by everyone spilling a bit of their own wine into Elijah’s empty cup.
14. Miriam’s cup is a new tradition that has become popular across all over the Jewish world.
15. Jews from Iran often have someone show up dressed as Pharaoh just before wine is spilled for the 10 plagues.
ANSWER KEY (highlight to reveal)
1 F. 2 T 3 F 4F (but it sounds great) 5- T 6 T 7 F
8 T 9 F 10 T 11 F 12 T (sadly) 13 T 14 F (only in USA) 15 F (but you could!)
THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Jeremy Gimbel
Elijah’s Cup: A Symbol of Agreeing to
Disagree
MAR 28, 2018, 8:01 AM
“Let’s agree to
disagree.”
That’s an expression
we often say when we reach a stalemate in a conversation. In essence, we say to each other, “I understand you have
a different point of view than I do, I’m not going to change my position. You’re
not going to change your position. So, we’ll part ways and deal with it another
day.” The Rabbis of the Talmud (that crucial collection of rabbinic commentary,
laws, and discussion finished about 1500 years ago) dealt with things in much
the same way, but they used a different word: an acronym, “tei’ku.”
Did you know that
there’s a remnant of a “teiku” argument on your seder table?
It all starts in the
Torah, Exodus 6:6-7. The Israelites are slaves to Egypt, and God promises a
bunch of pretty great things to the Israelites through Moses: “I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians
and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and
through extraordinary acts of judgement. And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your
God.” The Rabbis thought these were pretty great things too, so the four words
highlighted here became the justification for the four cups of wine that we
drink at the Passover seder.
With me so far? Great.
But get ready, because things are about to get messy.
The next verse
continues: “I will bring you
into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will
give it to you for a possession, I the Eternal.” The rabbis weren’t really sure
what to do with this extra verb, “bring.” Does that mean that we should
actually have five glasses of wine? Is that extra glass required? Optional? Not
allowed? Should the seder be focused on the exodus from Egypt alone and not the
Israelite’s eventual destination after attaining their freedom?
The rabbis couldn’t
reach an agreement. They understood that there were differing views, and that
neither side was going to be persuaded to change their mind. They said, “Teiku:
Tishbi Yitaretz Kushiot Ubay’aot – The Tishbite (aka: Elijah) will resolve questions
and problems.” In other words, we drink four cups, and we hope that one day
Elijah will return and tell us whether to drink a fifth cup.
Elijah
the Prophet is a symbol of a future time, when peace and harmony will reign. We
invoke Elijah at the end of Havdalah, in a verse of Birkat Hamazon (blessing
after meals), and at baby namings, all in hopes that Elijah might come and
bring about a time without human suffering. When we invoke Elijah at
the Passover Seder, it is not, as Rabbi Laura Baum termed in a Huffington Post article in 2012, a “Jewish
Santa Claus” who comes in, and when your back is turned, drinks the unattended
glass of wine in the middle of your table. We welcome Elijah because we
hope the Messianic age will come speedily in our day, and then we will know whether or not we can drink
that fifth glass.
Here is the core
value: Elijah’s cup is a symbol of agreeing to disagree. By design, the seder
is filled with lots of questions and invitations for even more. On the surface,
it may appear that the Haggadah does not sufficiently address how to have those
discussions, and, especially, how we should leave them if they are left
unresolved. With Elijah’s cup, we have an “out.” “Teiku,” we can say.
“Someday, we’ll find a good answer. It may not be today, but hopefully one day
soon.” How perfect is it that the symbol of unresolved discussion is filled
with a symbol associated with joy!
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