Rabbi's Messages

All Who are Hungry...

on Sunday, 20 March 2016.

Pesach. It’s like Judaism on steroids.

You take the ingredients of Judaism - food and family, blessings and prayers, intellect and spirituality, song and discussion - and you pack them all into a 3-hour timeslot while squeezing 25 people into your living room. No wonder we’re exhausted when this holiday is over!

The Seder is meant to be a multisensory experience. We eat various foods while thinking about their meaning. We drink wine while debating the limits of slavery and freedom. We cycle in rapid succession between nostalgia, sadness, hunger, joy, and hope. Perhaps above all else, the Seder is meant to challenge us – to live with gratitude, to draw connections between our own enslaved past and the imperfect world around us, and to work to make our world better.

That may be why my very favourite Passover tradition, out of all of the rituals and blessings, is a little-known line of Aramaic that comes early in the service: Kol dichfeen yitei v’yichul – “May all who are hungry come and eat.”

More than anything else, Pesach is about sharing food. We share food with our family members and our community. We share wine with Elijah. We share special recipes with one another. And, as is implied by this verse, we are meant to share with the hungry as well.

Kol dichfeen. All who are hungry. Who are the people who are “hungry” on Pesach? They may be the poor and the homeless, who are literally hungry. They may also be people who lack a family or a community with whom to share the holiday. All of us know somebody who – for whatever reason – is alone or disconnected on the holiday. And all of us can help. This Pesach, consider opening up a place at your Seder to someone who needs a place to go – a member of our community or a university student. Or consider a donation to Jewish Family and Child, to go toward providing Passover food for JF&C clients. Please contact me to find out how.

As we sit around our celebratory tables, we have the power to provide celebration and joy to others as well.

Best wishes for a happy and healthy Pesach,

Rabbi Micah Streiffer