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Rabbi’s Message for Pesach

April 8, 2020

As we move into the holiday of Passover, we want to express our gratitude for you, the individuals who make up our beloved BZBI community. Thank you for supporting our synagogue community and one another in this challenging and vulnerable time for all. We miss being together in person. And we are grateful for all the ways you have been reaching out to one another this past month and showing up by phone and by Zoom to pray, study, breathe, mourn, celebrate, bake, and schmooze together.

On Pesach night, we fulfill the mitzvah of telling the story of Passover, engaging our senses with the props on the seder table. The symbols of the seder encompass a wide range of emotions as we call on experiences of both oppression and freedom, of moments of despair and of hope. We dip fresh greens, bounty of spring’s renewal, in salt water tears. We pair bitter maror with sweet charoset and eat it with matzoh, which is known as both the bread of affliction and the bread of our liberation. We call out, “Dayenu!” our song of gratitude for all the blessings we have been given and we open the door for Elijah to bring the redemption for which we still yearn.

This Pesach, as we hold the brokenness and the beauty of our world together, may we cry out and sing out and mark the festival in ways that nourish our souls and that bring joy and meaning to this unprecedented  moment unprecedented in our lifetimes.

May healing come for all who are suffering in our families, in our community, city, country and all across our world.

May we hold ourselves and one another with patience and compassion through this time and all times.

As we tell our stories this Passover, may we be inspired with the courage to choose life and goodness each day.

Chag Kasher V’Sameach,

Rabbi Abe Friedman
Rabbi Annie Lewis
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