These are the days to hold on to…

These two weeks leading up to Pesach are sacred time. While still slaves in Egypt, God instructed Moshe to command a battered and forlorn people, to synchronize our watches and begin to count months, days and years together. This act is the first mitzvah and step guiding us into nationhood.

Once we establish the first day of the first month of our year, God quickly fills our calendar with dates to remember and actions to take. With to-do items scheduled on the 10^th, the 14^th and culminating with the 15^th, the middle of the month, when the moon is full and we are instructed to stand ready with our shoes tied, belts buckled and staff in hand to experience the amazing phenomena of the exodus that we will share with generations to come.

Before experiencing the miracles of the exodus, as slaves in Egypt, we were united by a shared itinerary in hand. Connected as a budding nation to one another clinging to this new model of time and datebook marked with inconceivable plans waiting to unfold.

When we sit down this year at our seder, under that same full moon on the 15^th day of that first month, we tell our story. The Haggada prompts our storytelling where we begin by focusing on the matza before us and declare, in Aramaic (the clear vernacular of the day) Ha Lachma Anya — this is the bread of affliction. Holding up a piece of matza, we assume the identities of archeologists, boasting a relic from our history. This matza, like Proust’s Madeleine, is a multisensory vehicle which draws us back in time and triggers our memories. With the fragile matza in hand, the unimaginable takes the stand to reveal its testimony of possibilities. There our ancestors ate this bread. But now, we are here. And next year we will be in a free Israel.

Articulating this arc of history is the core of our story. We are a people with a past and a future and also a clear here and now. Our 2025/5785 here and now is pained. It is a difficult space to hold. There are 59 people held prisoners in barbaric conditions for over 544 days. Bereaved families open their eyes each morning to face a crushing reality. Tens of thousands of our citizens cycle in and out of the battlefield giving endlessly of themselves for months at a time. Thousands of injured soldiers are struggling to confront the physical and emotional wounds of war. Our entire nation is crushed and exhausted. And Jews around the world confront rising antisemitism and fears.

On the seder night, we will be in this now — but holding the matza in hand.

Matza is a complex expression of time. On the one hand, the matza represents the bread that didn’t have time to rise and needed to be eaten mid process so that we could get going. (A characterization challenged by the synchronized calendar and its two-week lead time to prepare for the exodus). We touch the matza and spend the seder night surrounded by our fellow Jews talking through these details and others trying to understand the nuances, empathize with the experience and identify with the journey. The more we talk the better. The more questions that we can formulate, perspectives that we can consider, the more we can expand the possibilities of our mind in the now.

Perhaps surprising to our impression of Judaism which includes meals delight, today, matza at the seder is the only food that we are biblically commanded to eat during the entire year. We go beyond holding it, we must each bite into it and experience it. We taste that evidence and complex relation to time and sense the possibility of a future. We must taste the hope. The pace and details of our future is unknown- but please God it exists.

These days and weeks before Pesach challenge us to prepare for and anticipate the unique crunch to come, while our tongues attempt to identify the flavor and we surround ourselves with others that we can lean on. With a prayer that we can internalize the depth of that moment’s promise, next year in a liberated world of freedom and peace.