Passover Greeting from Cantor Elise Barber
Dear Friends,
Passover, the Jewish Festival of Freedom, is upon us. Here at the JGS Nursing Home and Ruth’s House, we will come together for the traditional Passover Seider tonight, Wednesday, April 1st and we continue to celebrate the holiday through Thursday evening, April 9th. We come in joy, we come to delight in delicious food, and we come simply to be together.
This past week, I had the privilege to teach about Passover to our staff and Sosin residents. It was wonderful to share Passover customs and to learn what resonates with people in our community and what about the holiday sparks their curiosity.
I tried to cover a lot of information about the Passover, but understandably, we didn’t have time to review everything. While we did talk about looking for the Afikoman, a fun custom involving hiding a piece of matzah, looking for the matzah (usually a job reserved for kids), and getting prizes for finding the hidden piece, we didn’t talk about another custom of hiding and finding that I just did with my kids Tuesday evening – B’dikat Chameitz. The night the day before the evening that starts the Passover holiday, parents hide pieces leavened food forbidden for the holiday around the house and kids look for it with a candle or flashlight in the dark, cleaning up what they find, usually with a feather and wooden spoon to be burned in the morning.
I bring up hiding and finding practices surrounding Passover not just because they might remind some of Easter egg hunts also happening at this time of year, but because hiding and searching can be meaningful pursuits.
During Passover, we recall the liberation from slavery in Egypt many years ago. The word for Egypt in Hebrew is Mitsrayim, which literally means, narrow place/s. When we talk about freedom and liberation during Passover, we are not just focusing on escaping slavery in the past, and we are not just focusing on physical liberation. A narrow place can also be psychological or spiritual. Part of celebrating Passover is to try to figure out how we can help others be released from narrow places, whether those are physical, psychological, or spiritual. And those experiences of constriction and struggle might not be obvious. In fact, it is natural when experiencing difficulty in our lives to feel a need to hide what is weighing us down, what is causing us to feel confined.
The practices in this season of hiding and finding can remind us to look carefully with kindness and love at each other—to seek out what might be causing suffering and to do what we can to alleviate each other’s burdens. I want to thank so many residents and fellow staff for the tenderness you have shown to me and to each other this past year. May Passover, or whatever festival you might celebrate this spring, bring you joy and love, and may we be inspired to search out what might be hidden – whether everyday gifts we might take for granted or something we might not know about the people around us. Wishing blessings to you and your family.
The JGS chaplains invite all staff to come by Michael’s Café next Monday, April 6th from 1-3pm for tea and Kosher for Passover treats. In the spirit of the Passover themes of freedom and renewal, we invite you to take an intentional pause from the busyness of work. Enjoy a cup of tea, connect with others, and refresh your spirit with our Spiritual Life Team. We look forward to seeing you there. Please share this invitation with everyone you work with!
Cantor Elise Barber
Director of Spiritual Life, Multifaith Chaplain
JGS Lifecare
770 Converse Street
Longmeadow, MA 01106
(413) 567-3949, ext. 3561
EBarber@jgslifecare.org
