Yehuda Bachana: Shabbat Chol HaMoed Pesach: Story-Telling to Remember

Like every year, Pesach is a very busy time. But at least this week, we are past our spring-cleaning, as well as some time-consuming organization, which included:

- Our congregational Seder Pesach: from the participation sign-up, our menu and the food-signup, to the grocery shopping, cooking and setting up our 16 tables;

- Special Pesach-requests for Hamotzi: we usually help out extra families for Pesach, but this year we helped out an extra neighborhood in East-Jerusalem;

- Thorough cleaning of our congregational building, and especially our kitchen;
And, all that during the week that kids enjoy their Pesach-holiday at home. Never a dull moment.

We are so very grateful our Seder Pesach was a great success!
We had a wonderful evening with amazing food and fellowship, and the kids enjoyed searching for the afikomen that Yehuda hid very well (which kept them busy for a while).The boy who found the afikomen happily received a colorful, fun remote-control car.

As organizers, and those who cooked and prepared, we are quite exhausted and in need of some extra sleep. Good thing we work a few less hours this week. It’s always funny how some people tend to be unaware of the amount of work and wonder ‘what the fuss is all about’. However, after all, the wonderful outcome was totally worth the effort!

All our preparations led up to one main event of Seder Pesach. What’s that all about?

Pesach is a biblical feast dedicated to the Exodus, where we sit for hours and talk about the Exodus from Egypt: before and after our special feast meal. That story-telling tradition is based on a few verses from Exodus 13:

“ You shall tell your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.” (verse 8)

“And when in time to come your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to him, ‘By a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery.” (verse 14)

The Haggadah is a 1800-year old guidebook that includes stories, psalms, and Bible verses that help us remember the Exodus from Egypt. By reading the Haggadah (literally: telling), we fulfil the commandment ‘to tell’ our national memory to the next generation.

One of the key sentences of the Haggadah is:

“In each and every generation a person is obliged to regard himself as if he had come out of Egypt.”

That sentence is quite odd, because many generations - including our own - have never even been to Egypt, which is why we couldn’t have left it either.

The meaning of this saying or declaration, is to announce:

“I’m a part of a collective that was redeemed from Egypt. I want to be a part of the redemption process that God started back at the Exodus from Egypt.”

An additional meaning to this declaration, is that each and every one should see themselves as having left Egypt. We are free to serve God without fearing what our neighbors (or even the world) will think or say. We should see ourselves as those that are willing to leave the security and the known, and take a leap of faith for the perhaps scary unknown, in order to be freed from slavery. This redemption is so essential, that the Torah commands us in several verses

“that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 16:3)

The moment we say God freed us from slavery, is the moment we are called to dig into our past and remember what Yeshua saved us from, personally. Which spiritual or physical Egypt did Yeshua take me from to freedom?

As a congregation, we are connected as a group of free people who was set free. Even though each life journey and every personal Egypt is unique. At the same time, we are also united in Messiah and in Yeshua’s salvation.

Pesach and Seder Pesach are the source of the Lord’s Supper and our salvation by His blood and sacrifice. A vital essence for us to remember ‘all the days of our life’, like the Scriptures asks us to.

During Pesach and the Shabbat of Chol Hamo’ed, we read several special readings. For the Shabbat of Chol Hamo’ed Pesach, we read about God’s revelation to Moses, and about the different attributes of God.

This Torah Portion immediately reminds me of Yeshua’s famous parable of the House on the Rock. The big question remains: “What do I build my house on? A riverbank? Somewhere with a breath-taking view? But what happens when the river overflows? …Perhaps it’s safer to build it on a solid rock. But what or who is that rock?

The prophet Isaiah calls God ‘the Rock of Israel’, and the Prayer for the Peace of the State of Israel calls God ‘Rock of Israel and its redeemer’. The term rock, as well as the Stone Tablets, are meaningful as God Himself handwrote the Torah on pieces of stone. The People of Israel drank water from the rock in the desert. And the Bible compares God - as well as our trust in God - to a rock:

“Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.” (Isaiah 26:4).

This idea is repeated again and again throughout the Bible and especially in the Psalms, for example:

“On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God.” (Psalm 62:7)

This week we read how Moses wanted to see God’s glory, but God answer:

“you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” 

God doesn’t allow Moses to see His face, but God does allow Moses to see part of His glory:

“And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock” (Exodus 33:20-21)

There, on the rock, Moses witnesses the 13 attributes of God:

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin” (Exodus 34:6-7)

And so, God is compared to a rock, or He reveals Himself besides a rock, like when He showed some of His glory to Moses, or when Moses struck the rock for water:

“Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” (Exodus 17:6)

The New Testament continues and attributes the words ‘rock’ and ‘stone’ to Messiah, too, like the famous verse at the end of the ‘Hallel’-songs that we sing when we celebrate the New Moon:

“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (Psalm 118:22, Mathew 21:42)

The New Testament interprets this verse to be about the Messiah, about Yeshua. In fact, the One Who was rejected, turns out to be the essence! The New Testament adds a warning to:

"the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” (verse 44)

I choose to build my house on the rock, on Yeshua the Messiah. There, God will reveal Himself, and on such a Rock, He will give us His Word and His commandments.

May we all be blessed with a happy and kosher Pesach, getting rid of the external - as well as the internal - ‘leaven’ a spring feast of renewal and new beginnings of rest as well as success a feast of true freedom in Yeshua the Mesiah, our Redeemer, Lord, and Lamb of God, Yeshua is the Lamb of God who carries the sins of the world.