By Rebbetzen Rachie Lister, Edgware United Synagogue
Pesach celebrates when Israel went out of Egypt. We read in the second paragraph of Hallel, recited every day during Pesach: “When Israel went out of Egypt, Ya’akov’s household from a people of alien tongue, Judah became His sanctuary and Israel His dominions.” (Tehillim/Psalms 114:2)
As the Jewish people left Egypt, they became transformed from a downtrodden people to a nation that had miraculously prevailed over a whip-wielding tyrannical state which ridiculed virtue and morality. At this point of departure, as this verse relates, Judah became the herald of Divine victory, charged with bringing about a Divine Kingdom on earth under God’s command.
It is no coincidence that, as we celebrate Pesach, it is not our synagogues that are decorated to celebrate this national birth. Rather it is in our homes that the awakening takes place. Whoever wishes to really understand Judaism should come and see how we observe Pesach! All of the rooms which are used in our domestic life or for the pursuit of our livelihood carry the imprint of this festival. As we seek to remove all traces of chametz, the theme of the festival penetrates the humblest corners of our abode. Our ‘bread of affliction’ is prepared for our tables, not for an altar, and our seder nights most commonly take place in our own homes.
This year-after-year devotion of our entire being, our strength and our means to the service of the One God has preserved this experience of redemption. By no means was the redemption a deed performed once long ago in ancient history; rather it is an ongoing redemption every day, every hour and with every breath. The redemption was not just for shuls but also for homes, doorposts and thresholds; it was not just for altars but for souls, families and communities. It is the total service of God that makes us free. In that service, our homes become places where the Greatness of God can manifest itself and become building blocks for the glorification of God on earth. All our living quarters thus become His Sanctuary.
This is what God required in the hour of redemption. Therefore the first Jewish national altar on that fateful night in Egypt was the “threshold and the doorpost” of the Jewish home (Shemot 12:22). The first sacrificial lamb in our history was tied to the bedpost and eaten in the privacy of that home.
The seder night is a night of sterling Divine protection for Israel (ibid 12:42). God’s protection is ever over our own homes, leading us beyond death and slavery to a life of freedom in His Service and toward Redemption under His guidance. Some day we will no longer say ‘next year in Jerusalem’, but rather we will gather once again in Jerusalem on this night of Redemption. Then we will look back and say, even before, when we had no Temple, Judah will have become and will always have been His Sanctuary.