חסל סדור פסח

Well,  the getting ready part of Pesach is nearly over.  My freezer and fridge are packed to the gills with the food I have been preparing.

I ground up the horseradish this morning amid much screaming in pain. Tonight’s matza balls are being loaded into the fridge by my son as I type these words.

The table cloths and doilies are all pressed. I am slightly crazed with exhaustion and will soon take a nap.

Our guests will start wandering in from various directions.

I wanted to say how before the destruction of the Temple, worship of God was done in a physical way. Yesterday’s Torah reading reminded me. You brought your cow or your sheep to the Temple, it got slaughtered hoisted up on the alter and cooked. Worship was less about words as it was about intentional hard physical  labor.

 

This prep time for Passover has been filled with much physical labor. I have been doing those labors in the spirit of our ancestors who di the hard work in Beit Ha Mikdash. Seeing the scrubbing and chopping and cleaning through that lens has allowed me to see the work as עבודה

not just as work but as a form of עבודת הלב.

As I have done this work over the past week I have had many thoughts of preparing for Passover with my parents.

The traditional foods are cooked. The foods traditional to my family are cooked as well. After all, how can one celebrate the Exodus without lots of radish roses?

The dishes and the table cloth in the photo above will be on my table. The memories and the melodies that I learned at that table in Quincy will be sung by people who experienced those sedarim and those who hadn’t.

For all of us who went through the labors, the עבודה of preparing enjoy our communal and personal liberation from slavery.

 

A sweet, sweet Pesach to everyone.