{ "clip_details": { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "what-passover-alternative-four-questions-jay-michaelson", "title": "What is Passover? An Alternative Four Questions by Jay Michaelson", "author": "Jay Michaelson", "author_handle": "jmetatron", "author_initials": "JM", "covertext": "1. Where did Passover come from? Once we had two spring festivals: Pesach, a lambing holiday on which a newborn lamb was...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/139876/conversions/Michaelson073-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/139876/Michaelson073.jpg", "body": "<p>1. Where did Passover come from?</p>\n\n<p>Once we had two spring festivals: Pesach, a lambing holiday on which a newborn lamb was killed and eaten, and Chag Hamatzah, a holiday celebrating the year’s first grain.</p>\n\n<p>Eventually, these two earth-based festivals became tied together into the Exodus narrative, part of the collection of new myths that bound the disparate Canaanite groups together as \"Israel.\" These myths were oral traditions at first, and then recorded in various texts that eventually were stitched together into the Bible.</p>\n\n<p>The name Pesach was repurposed from the Paschal Sacrifice to mean \"pass over\" as is God “passed over” the houses of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt. And matzah came to mean the unleavened bread baked as the liberates slaves left.</p>\n\n<p>One of the names of Passover is still <em>Chag Ha'Aviv</em>, the Spring Holiday.</p>\n\n<p>2. Where did the Seder come from?</p>\n\n<p>The Seder is an adaptation of the classical \"Symposium,\" a long banquet on a single subject. That secular custom was adapted by the Talmudic rabbis as a modern way of celebrating Passover, once the Temple was destroyed and the Passover sacrifice became impossible. As in many other instances, the rabbis transformed Judaism from a Temple-based religion to a portable religion that could be practiced anywhere. They also created a new ritual to compete with the new Christian Jews, who were reinterpreting the Passover symbols in new ways (e.g. last supper, lamb of God, communion).</p>\n\n<p>3. Why do people still celebrate this ritual today?</p>\n\n<p>The Passover Seder is the second most widely observed Jewish ritual today -- second to fasting on Yom Kippur. There are many reasons why it has endured. It is kinaesthetic, filled with special symbolic foods and objects. It is familial and food centered, like Thanksgiving dinner. And it is decentralized, performed at home rather than in a synagogue where people are told what to do by authority figures.</p>\n\n<p>4. What are some themes of the holiday?</p>\n\n<p>Freedom, liberation, and justice.</p>\n\n<p>The birth of the Jewish people and the miracles of the Exodus.</p>\n\n<p>The cycle of the seasons and springtime renewal.</p>\n\n<p>The hardship of slavery and God's promise to Israel.</p>\n\n<p>The moral imperative to help those who are suffering or oppressed.</p>\n", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Jay Michaelson", "featured": 1, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "-- Four Questions", "slug": "four-questions" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 233, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "What is Passover? An Alternative Four Questions by Jay Michaelson | Passover haggadah by Jay Michaelson", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/what-passover-alternative-four-questions-jay-michaelson", "og:title": "What is Passover? An Alternative Four Questions by Jay Michaelson | Passover haggadah by Jay Michaelson", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, "contributed_by": { "author": "Jay Michaelson", "handle": "jmetatron", "author_initials": "JM", "total_books": 0, "total_clips": 2, "total_followers": 0, "is_following": 0 }, "user_book": null, "clips_by_author": [ { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "eating-meditation-passover", "title": "Eating Meditation for Passover", "author": "Jay Michaelson", "author_handle": "jmetatron", "author_initials": "JM", "covertext": "Matza, or unleavened bread, is one of the staples of the Passover seder. But what can matza teach us? Use this extended...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/139876/conversions/Michaelson073-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/139876/Michaelson073.jpg", "body": "<p> <em>Matza, or unleavened bread, is one of the staples of the Passover seder. But what can matza teach us? Use this extended meditation by Rabbi Jay Michaelson to explore how matza can instruct us in conscious, embodied living.</em> </p>\n\n<p>Jewish law requires that a surprisingly large amount of <em>matzamaror</em>, and <em>matza/maror</em> \"sandwich\" be eaten during the Passover seder. Most observance of this mitzvah falls into one of two categories: ignoring the legal requirements, or wolfing down huge sheets of unleavened bread in a mixture of piety and masochism.</p>\n\n<p>I think that these size requirements, though, are really demanding that we eat enough <em>matza</em> and <em>maror</em> to notice it. Thus, I recommend turning the practice into an eating meditation.</p>\n\n<p>Let's focus on the <em>matza</em> . You might begin with a contemplation of the <em>matza</em> itself, using the four worlds as a guiding map.</p>\n\n<p>On the level of <em>asiyah</em> (action, materiality, body), feel the <em>matza</em> itself, its weight, the way it feels in your hand. Notice if any sensations arise in the body: salivation, perhaps. Then move to the level of <em>yetzirah</em> (formation, emotion, heart): notice what the large piece of <em>matza</em> evokes in your heart. Are you looking forward to eating it? Dreading it? Worrying about your digestion? Maybe you're remembering -- perhaps very subtly -- seders past, when you sat with your parents and schemed around the <em>Afikoman</em>. Maybe you're feeling, at this moment, some of the love, or trepidation, or confusion, of the seder where you are. Try to feel these emotions in the body, as events of the body, and see them for what they are: simultaneously evanescent and essential.</p>\n\n<p>On the level of <em>briyah</em> (creation, thought, mind), I invite you to consider all that went into the production of this matza. How many people -- the farmers growing the grain, the bakers, the <em>mashgiach</em> (supervisor of the kosher status of the food), the truck drivers -- were involved in bringing it to your table? Think about the ingredients of the <em>matza</em> , along the lines of Thich Nhat Hanh's \"Interbeing\": the matza depends on wheat which depends on rain which depends on clouds. Without the cloud, there is no <em>matza</em> . Or, the <em>matza depends on a baker whose life depends on a myriad of causes and</em> coincidences. Let your mind expand the matza beyond the sheet in your hand, to as many causes in the universe as you care to imagine. Know that everything we hold, everything we see, is part of a web of life.</p>\n\n<p>Finally, on the level of <em>atzilut</em> (emanation, spirit, soul), allow yourself to ask: if the <em>matza</em> is really just a node on this \"web of life,\" what is it, really? What is \"matza\" about <em>matza</em> ? What is \"you\" about you? Everything we are, and everything we see, is really a cause or condition of something else, fleeting, empty of separateness, and unable to satisfy us on a permanent basis. Consider, too, the context of this <em>matza </em> -- its symbolism, and how the bread of slaves became the bread of freedom, due only to the context of its creation.</p>\n\n<p>Okay, you can eat.</p>\n\n<p>As you eat, work again through these four worlds. Notice the physical sensation of the <em>matza</em> in your mouth. Experiment with not swallowing anything that hasn't been thoroughly mashed up and liquified (this can take a while with <em>matza</em> ...), and see how that feels. Emotionally, do you feel connected? Resentful? Curious? Nostalgic? Try to call the mind back, when it wanders, to this moment, eating this food, as Jews have done for three thousand years.</p>\n\n<p>On the intellectual level, consider the <em>matza</em> in the light of the four elements, which, while not scientifically descriptive of reality, do describe our experience remarkably well. Can you taste the earth-element in the matza? How about fire -- necessary to bake it, perhaps evinced by some burn marks, and also, in some systems of thought, necessary to digest it as well? Notice how your mouth releases water to help chew the dry food. And observe that, even in unleavened bread, there are small pockets of air. Really, our experience of the matza is really an experience of its constituent parts. There is never a moment at which we experience \"matza\" -- it's always an experience of an ingredient, which is itself actually an experience of particular chemical properties. On our phenomenal level, we experience <em>matza</em> . But if there really is an Infinite Being, who is eating and what is being eaten?</p>\n\n<p>Sometimes we leap right into the historical, legal, and cultural aspects of the matza and maror. This is alright, but if you think about it, they're all on the intellectual plane, with only small tinges of the spiritual and emotional. What about our bodies, our hearts, and our souls? Eating <em>matza</em> is one of many embodied practices within the Jewish tradition; it connects us to the Earth and draws our attention to the cyclicality and the linearity of our lived experience. So I invite you to use mindfulness to enliven your seder, not by distraction, but by attention. Take as long as you need; the gefilte fish won't spoil, and neither will the salty egg. This act of eating connects you to generations of godwrestlers. If you pay enough attention to it, you might taste the Oneness they encountered all those years ago, one Egyptian night, rushing into freedom.</p>", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Jay Michaelson", "featured": 1, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Motzi-Matzah", "slug": "motzi-matzah" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 232, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Eating Meditation for Passover | Passover haggadah by Jay Michaelson", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. 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