Why is this Night Different to all other…Holidays? (Spiele 2020 pt. 2)

Part 2: Why is this Night Different to all other…Holidays?

Pesach is, by some statistics, the most observed Jewish holiday, and as it happens, my favorite by far: I started writing this in August if that gives you an idea. I’ll get back to my own reasons in a minute, but I have thought at length about why this would be, broadly speaking, and I’ll elaborate on my the progression of my thoughts as I tried to explain what that really means for the holiday, and for the Jewish people as a whole.

  To begin with, an obvious statement: this means Pesach beats out the high holy-days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and it beats out Chanukah, which is probably the most recognizable Jewish holiday within the non-Jewish Western World. Pesach has sandwiched itself—though not because of Hillel’s invention—between the most and the least holy of the mainstream Jewish holidays. If Chanukah got that status because of its proximity to Christmas, as well as having not one but two recognizable symbols: dreidls and chanukiyos, I don’t think that Pesach is propped up by its own religious standing, and neither do I think it continues to be promoted by the existence of Easter. Nonetheless, I don’t know how much it matters. Not only is Easter-celebration diminishing among some Christians, and it is certainly less of a cultural phenomenon than Christmas is, somehow, but what Chanukah latched onto was the commercialization of Christmas, and that doesn’t really exist for these two spring-time holidays.

I do think it has to do, however, with what is appealing to the less religious. You don’t need to convince an Orthodox Jew to observe Yom Kippur, even though it lacks the notable symbols, or indeed food, and it is focused on G-d forgiving our mistakes. Indeed, having inhabited secular, reform, and orthodox circles at some point in my life, anecdotally speaking I don’t see Chanuka as being particularly observed in Orthodox circles to the same degree, per se. I thought that Pesach is the holiday of the everyman-Jew, since Pesach is not too religious to scare off the sort of Jew who only identifies around eating smoked salmon and throwing in the annoying elitism of a mispronounced Yiddish word every so often as a sort of Ashkenazi wink, but neither is it too removed from the scripture for the Orthodox Jew who would sooner do crystal meth than eat a ham sandwich. And besides, who doesn’t like food? Though then again there are two holidays derived from mostly the same story for which not only are you allowed to eat bread, but one is literally a harvest festival. I’m talking about Passover’s twin, Sukkos and to a lesser extend Shavuous.

So sure, is Passover the Jewish Thanksgiving?: Yes, though American Jews also celebrate regular Thanksgiving, and you can’t eat stuffing or pie here.

Is it Jewish Easter: Yes, and remember that The Last Supper was a Seder, but the cultural significance to that is less every year.

Is it particularly religious: Yes, but so are Sukkos and Shavuous, and those are probably more flexible and open to turn into a party.

Pesach is a blend of many things: holiness and purity, along with practices that might be considered kitchy to the non-observant, just like any other holiday. The Seder-plate is one sort of gimmick, but the list goes on: not eating bread, grains, legumes and more for 8 days stands out to me, as does leaning to the left to drink wine and eat matzo. I don’t think that matters though. What sticks out to me most is that Pesach is a religious holiday that isn’t about being in a synagogue or by a river or in a tent or whatever. Certainly there are special prayers and other things that those who attend services will say and do, but Passover is a holiday that is meant to be celebrated in a home. There are other holidays that might be a bit more party-filled—Purim springs to mind—and indeed The Book of Esther doesn’t even mention G-d (or at most it does once) but I believe it is precisely because Pesach is a story of Jews and G-d working side-by side which makes it so attractive to Jews of every denomination or indeed lack of denomination. For Purim, orthodox megilah readings can be as plain reading as any other book, while liberal shuls distinguish themselves by putting on increasingly raucous interpretations of the story as to remove, at times, any of the original content; like a Jewish Halloween. Pesach doesn’t need that. Pesach is about G-d, and it also about people listening to, but moreover not listening to G-d. It is a story about the Israelites becoming the Jewish people, and moving from the status of merely tribes to becoming a nation. This is a story of vengeance towards abusive masters, a story of the Jewish people starting on the two score journey to the Holy Land, delayed, as we always are, by our own human foibles and deficiencies. It is a story of the origins of Shabbos, not Genesis when G-d created the rest, but of a time when the Jewish people emancipated themselves, and had the power to determine the course of their own lives. I will get back to this at a later point, because I think this, I will argue more than anything else, is what is important. Pesach, on the surface, doesn’t make sense as a popular holiday. It has rules about cleaning, and cooking, and eating; Pesach also spells everything out for people. It’s an instructional holiday like none of the rest is.

So to end my winding exposition, I think that Pesach is the most observed Jewish holiday not because of obligation, as many may feel with the high holidays, nor as a sort of cultural competition that exists with others, but because of the needs of the modern Jew. In a time when fewer people with more liberal religious inclinations are attending synagogues, or participating in other Jewish activities generally speaking, and in a time when fewer people believe in G-d broadly speaking, people reach out to certain occasions to bring them together around something commonly understood, whether that is family, food, or something much greater.