Rabbi’s Passover Message

Rabbi Natan Halevy

Passover 2023 / Pesah 5783

Shalom U’vracha,

We are reaching the special time of year when spring is upon us, and we are blessed with the holiday of Pesah. During this yearly season, we connect deeply to the energy of hope, envisioning and anticipating the positive, transformative influence of Hashem, an effect often called “redemption” or “salvation”. We express gratitude with the blessing “shehekheyanu v’kiyemanu v’higiyanu la’zman ha’zeh.” We thank Hashem for giving us life, sustaining us, and bringing us to this special time.

Annually, we are given the opportunity to tap the inner well of our soul and awaken our connection with Hashem, recognizing these resources as ever-present in our lives. Because we are souls in physical form, we live in a world of contradictions, paradoxes, and challenges which may, at times, shake us to our core.

Hashem has placed us in this realm to arouse hope in the face of despair, to shine our light in the murky dimness of this world. During Pesah, the festival of freedom, we experience the story of our people through the reading of the Haggadah. We relive the physical and emotional depths of slavery from which we rise up and reach spiritual freedom as a liberated people.

Re-experiencing this journey and applying its lessons, we are strengthened and elevated to a higher level of existence today, in our present lives. Pesah and its mitzvot help us achieve an individual mindset of free choice and ethical responsibility, while collectively we experience spiritual liberation and renewal as a community.

Cleaning for hametz reminds us of the constant inner labor of refining ourselves, searching our inner lives, scrubbing and polishing our coarse character traits. Eating matza, a simple food, is one of the main commandments of the holiday. It reminds us to stay humble and to place our trust in Hashem who will sustain us, in the process infusing us with faith and inner healing. When we are stronger in our core we live our lives in a more spiritually graceful, elegant manner, with clear purpose and focused energy.

Similarly, other mitzvot we engage in during the Seder, such as drinking wine and reclining on cushions, remind us that we are kings and queens, princes and princesses, regal souls containing divine sparks here on this earth to serve a higher purpose.

May we continue to be blessed with good health and good fortune, insha’ala.

“Hag kasher ve’sameah”—wishing you a kosher, healthy, and happy Pesah