Passover: A Family Ritual

Rev. Amy Russell - 2010-04-11

Passover: A Family Ritual
April 11, 2010
Rev. Amy Russell

I remember attending my first Seder dinner during college, at a friend's family's house. I had known nothing about the tradition and the family enjoyed greatly filling me in on the various special foods and traditions that made a seder meal the special celebration that it is. They told me all about the afikoman, the piece of Matzoh that is broken off in the beginning of the meal and hidden for the children to find. Whoever finds it gets some treat some candies or dates to eat. That night I was selected as the “child” for the evening since there were no children and I had never experienced the tradition. I nervously hunted around the living room to no avail. Finally, they started giving me clues, “You're cold”, “you're warmer, you're hot” until I was led to my friends purse and found the matzoh hidden there. Everyone laughed and clapped and I was given a chocolate Easter egg which seemed rather out of place to me, but at least it was something I was familiar with.

The Passover seder meal is an ancient Jewish tradition which allows families to not only celebrate the religious significance but also to underscore this importance to the children and family members. It is celebrated in the family, not in the synogogue, and this makes it integrated into family life. The celebration which marks the Jews exodus out of slavery in Egypt and the beginning of their 40 year journey to the Promised Land in Israel is noted as the most important celebration to Jews. It celebrates God's covenant with the Jews to bring them into freedom and to make them his Chosen People.

During the meal, an interactive reading tells about the Jews flight from Egypt and how God led them and the importance of this journey to their freedom. The readings created for this meal are called the “Haggadah” and they are not set in stone but can be creatively changed to commemorate the holiday with different emphasis. In modern times, Haggadah have been written to emphasize the civil rights of many different peoples in different settings.

Throughout the reading, children play a major role in asking questions of the adults in a ritualistic way. Children are important to this celebration because they carry forth the legacy of the Jewish people. The ritual is designed to teach children about this significant religious event in a way that is celebratory. In a way that honors both the religious teaching and the importance of the family in passing down the Jewish traditions. The meal has special foods that are reminders of the story of Passover, like the horseradish or parsley which is called the bitter herbs, representing the slavery the Jewish people endured in history. Each of the elements of the meal contain special significance to the story of the Jews.

The repetitive nature of the ritual, with the same four questions asked each Passover, the same ritual foods eaten, makes memories for families. The traditions which are repeated each Passover, create family traditions which are touchstones for people later in life. Touchstones of the importance of spiritual practice and the importance of family.

Many of us grew up with some kind of family traditions which repeated over and over again, either at holiday times, or during meal times or bed times became for us meaningful to what they reminders. Do they remind us of our religious background, the spiritual practices we were taught, or do they simply remind us of family, of how family felt to us?

So, what family rituals or traditions did you have growing up? Did your parents read you a story before bed? Or have a blessing at the table?

In my family, we had a dinner table blessing every night that my father said. It was the same every night, “Bless this food and us to thy use. Amen.” That's it. Short and sweet. I can't say that I paid much attention to it. It wasn't particularly religious or sentimental. But when I think of my Dad now, those moments of him saying that blessing come back to me with great sweetness. What is means to me now is that my family thought that being together was important and that remembering to be thankful for what we received was important. And that part about being useful in return was also in there. I haven't thought much about it. But I think it was so a part of what I grew up with that I'm not really even aware of how it affected me. But I do think it affected me. It's interesting to me now that I was sort of brainwashed into thinking about family, about God, and about service to God as foundational to my upbringing.

The message of belonging, the message of being loved, the message of sacred time. Creating family or individual rituals and repeating them over and over makes a memory for you and your family members. Memories that impose important messages. You belong. You are loved. Time spent in a special way becomes sacred.

Our lives are so much about doing, about getting things done. And our busy lives are constantly changing. The stress of two career families with kids involved in numerous extra curricular activities keeps us focused on doing, on accomplishment. In a fast-paced world, where so much of our time is focused on technology- the computer, the video games, the cell phone- there is very little time that is focused on the family and our relationships. Social scientists note that meaningful family traditions promote a sense of family unity and a feeling of closeness that we are losing in our loose knit society. The bonds that we create with our family and with our friends are a foundation for our lives and the creation of meaning within them.

Creating rituals and traditions that we mark regularly, honor a sense of meaningful existence outside of the habit of moving through life thoughtlessly. We often don't leave room for sacred time. Time for marking the importance of family, of relationship, of just appreciating the gifts of life.

Rachel Pollack defines sacred time as “an opening to a power beyond ordinary reality”. Ritual creates sacred time which opens up for us an honoring of those things we see as sacred in our lives. Pollack says that we need time to experience the awe and wonder of our lives. She says, “The desire to laugh, or cry out, or maybe weep, not from sadness or even joy, but just from so much amazement, and love, filling our small selves.” The Greek word “ecstasy” she mentions is a word meaning to stand outside yourself. To lose our weariness and boredom and to experience a oneness with the world around us.

Rachel Naomi Remen, whose grandfather was an Orthodox rabbi, left her a legacy of appreciating the sacredness of blessing. When he sat down with her every Friday afternoon to have a time of tea and prayer, he taught her that she was cared for, that she was special, and that there is a way to mark the blessings of life in a sacred way. Her later appreciation for the Jewish faith originated with her experience with her grandfather on these special Friday afternoons. She says “These few moments were the only time in my week when I felt completely safe and at rest.” She learned from being with him that she was special, that she was a blessing to him and to God. In her own practice as a psychotherapist, she would encourage her patients to find what was sacred to them and to mark this with some kind of ritual.

Rituals are difficult for Unitarian Universalist often because many of us left a formal religious organization where the rituals had overtaken the meaning. The rituals had become for some of us more important than the people and the relationship to the sacred. Instead of rituals allowing us to mark what we found meaningful in our lives, often the church rituals become the thing that was sacred. And the meaning was often lost.

Rituals can be whatever we make of them. They can be something that helps an individual to figure out what is sacred and then remind them of that sacredness. For many of us, walking in nature can be sacred. We can make these times a time of quietude, a time of reflection. For some of us, meal time is sacred either with others or by ourselves.

Mindfulness teaches us that each everyday action we take is sacred if we mark it as so. Buddhist and Catholic monks often enforce quiet time during meals in order for them to experience the appreciation of each bite of the meal. When we watch TV or eat hurriedly, we sometimes forget to savor the taste of each bite, to appreciate what we have been given.

For many years, as a Buddhist, my family performed our ritual of chanting in front of an altar every day. The chanting and meditation took about 30-45 minutes. The altar contained symbols that honored aspects of life. There were candles marking eternal life, water, the ever changing aspect of life, fruit, the nourishment that the earth gives us, and evergreen leaves, the beauty of the earth. During our meditation, we focused on our appreciation for our lives and our goals for the day. This was not a clearing your mind type of meditation. But it was a time to prioritize your goals for the day and be mindful of your appreciation. Doing the ritual every day made us focus ourselves as a family on what we thought was important and meaningful and honor it together. We were creating space for the sacredness of our lives.

I left that practice for many reasons. But I still take time each morning to do a few minutes of yoga and meditation, first clearing my mind, then focusing my self on thankfulness. When I take the time for this small ritual, I feel grounded when I start my day. I feel more in touch with what I see as sacred. I experience the day with more appreciation, less mindless hurrying to get things done. This time that I take outside the normal busyness is a sacred time, just for me.

Each individual or family can create their own rituals that are unique to them. A blessing at the table together at a meal. Reading together a story before bed and then sharing stories about the day with each other marks a special time for sharing. Putting special objects on an altar or table and using them to call attention to the sacredness of nature is one way of honoring something sacred to you. Some couples share special times of being together that are a ritual of their own making.

Then we might want to create rituals for special times. I recently took part in a blessing of a new home. A group of us went into each room and participating in a responsive reading that blessed each room for its special purpose. The homeowner felt very warm about having her friends bless her new home with their love.

Some of us have participated in rituals for healing. When someone is experiencing a difficult illness or hard time, creating a special ritual with blessings for that person can be a very healing experience. It means that we are focusing our love and intentions on helping that person find wellness within themselves.

When my Dad was dying, my family gathered in his hospital room and each night before we would go home after we had each said good-night, we would gather and hold hands looking at him and sending him love. Sometimes we would say a prayer, sometimes we would just squeeze his hand and say good-bye. Sometimes rituals are something we create right at a special moment. We just feel the need for a prayer or silent moment honoring that sacred time.

Every Sunday, we light our chalice to create the sacred time of our being together. And later, we extinguish our chalice by saying words together. The words we say are not as important as the fact that we are all saying them together, words that since we say them every week take on a special significance. They mark our time together as sacred and create the possibility that as we leave, we carry with us the hope and the love that we’ve created together. We carry that hope and love back into our ordinary lives. Carrying the sacredness with us.