And so we end the Passover seder according to law.
We have conducted it according to tradition, according to statute.
Just as we have merited the privilege of conducting it this year, so may we be worthy of performing it in the future.
Oh Pure One Who dwells on high, raise up your numberless people!
Speedily lead the shoots of Your stock, redeemed, to Zion with joyous song!
Next year in Jerusalem!
This poem (it rhymes in the original Hebrew), originating in France roughly 1,000 years ago, marks the beginning of Nirtzah, the final section of the Haggadah. It seems fitting, therefore, to begin the concluding diary in our series about the Haggadah (itself part of a series of diaries about Passover) with it.
But of course, before we get to Nirtzah, we still have one more section of the Haggadah to address: Hallel.
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Hallel
Passover is our festival of freedom, commemorating our redemption from slavery in Egypt. The previous diaries in this series addressed the first dozen parts (or 13 -- depends on how you count them) of the Haggadah, which had to do with blessings over wine, green vegetables, hand-washing, matzah, bitter herbs, and the festive meal; the grace after meals; and a recounting of the story of the Exodus from Egypt. But until now, with the exception of the first two psalms of the traditional Hallel series of prayers that is recited on major holidays, which were recited before the festive meal, we have not yet recited any prayers that were composes specifically in praise of God.
But we're still Jews. And Jews who pray (with no judgment implied of the ones who don't) aren't going to let a holiday pass without such prayers. Thus the inclusion of Hallel in the Haggadah. Hallel, from the root meaning "to praise," is simply that -- a series of prayers in praise of God for all that He/She/It has done for us.
Why pray at all? Why do Jews pray in general? The answer depends on who you ask, and you'd do well to remember that famous formulation that at least one other diarist in this series quoted: where there are two Jews, there are three opinions. Jewish prayers take several inherent forms -- we have prayers of thanksgiving, prayers of benediction, prayers of praise, prayers of repentance, and so on. Our prayers can be highly structured -- think Shacharit, Mincha, Ma'ariv, and the like (for those not familiar with Jewish liturgy, these are the daily services of the morning, afternoon, and evening). And our prayers can be very loose -- most scholars would say that a Jew may pray at almost any time and in almost any place. We have prayers for everything, even things for which there is no set prayer and for situations where you don't know what the appropriate prayer is. (Try wrapping your mind around that one -- it deserves a longer conversation than I'm willing to have in this diary.)
Traditionalists would tell you that a Jew (more accurately, an adult male Jew -- women are exempted from most time-bound mitzvot; again, worth a longer conversation than we can have right now) must recite each of the fixed prayers every day, and that all Jews are obligated to recite other kinds of prayers at other times -- for instance, at meals. Most Jews, however, pray when they feel up to it, which may mean not at all, even if they're attending services or a Passover seder.
And I think most people, when they think of prayer, are thinking of a specific kind of prayer -- the kind where you ask for something. Sometimes it's as basic and self-focused as "please, God, let me do well on my algebra test in fifth period"; sometimes it's more complicated and other-centered, like "please, God, let so-and-so feel comfort in his/her time of difficulty." But no matter how hard we pray and no matter how deserving we think we are, sometimes we don't get exactly what we pray for.
Even Moses, who led our people out of Egypt, didn't always get what he prayed for. At the end of his life, knowing he had to turn over the mantle of leadership to someone else, prayed to God to be allowed to continue with the Israelites into the land of Canaan. God denied his request, and Moses didn't take it all that well (Deuteronomy 3:23-25).
Even Moses didn't always get what he prayed for. And perhaps that should tell us something about the nature of prayer -- it's not a magical solution whereby you ask for something and get it. And if you don't get what you prayed for, it doesn't mean that God is ignoring you or that you're an idiot if you keep praying. We are not that uncritical or that unthinking -- we don't believe in the three-year-old-level-of-understanding conception of prayer.
When a Jew prays with genuine kavanah (this is one of those words that doesn't really translate well in context, but you may take it as pure intent or motivation), it is not with the expectation that whatever s/he prays for will come to be. Jewish prayer is meant to be a meditative act, not a selfish one. We pray to remind ourselves that we are part of a collective greater than ourselves, to reinforce our social bonds to our community -- Jewish prayer is primarily a communal activity, not a solitary one. And so our prayer serves its purposes communally. We pray to calm ourselves, to relieve stress -- to remind ourselves that there are people who can help us when we are troubled; to remind ourselves and others to be grateful for what we have; to remind ourselves and others to do more to help those in need. Throughout the Haggadah, we are reminded of how fortunate we are. We were slaves and now are free -- but others are still in bondage. We were hungry and now we (most of us, anyway) have more than enough -- but others are still starving. We had little to be thankful for and now are prosperous -- but others are still suffering.
And yes, sometimes we make requests that are only about ourselves and our desires. And sometimes we get what we want, and sometimes we don't -- and when we do, it tends to be via readily identifiable mundane means rather than Divine intervention. But even Moses didn't always get what he prayed for; who are we to think we should do any better?
So we recite prayers praising God as we near the conclusion of the seder. These prayers aren't about what we want or need, rather they're a celebration of our holiday and our community, and a reminder to help those who struggle to follow in our footsteps and raise themselves up. They remind us of who we are and where we come from, and how much harder we need to work to live up to our highest ideals.
Nirtzah
And now we come to the final section of the Haggadah. And lest anyone tell you the final lines of the poem I posted at the beginning of this diary ("Speedily lead the shoots of Your stock, redeemed, to Zion with joyous song! Next year in Jerusalem!") are evidence of some fundamentalist, exclusionary ideology, note that nowhere does it say that others aren't welcome to join us. As we read earlier in the Haggadah, "Let all who are hungry come and eat!"
Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews traditionally end the seder with the fourth cup of wine, which comes at the very end of the Hallel section. Kabbalists will end the seder at that point and immediate recite Shir HaShirim (the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon). Ashkenazi Jews, on the other hand, have a variety of traditional songs they have added to the end of the seder (and many Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews have adopted these as well). These songs are essentially the Nirtzah section, and they are meant to convey lessons about the nature of God, Jewish values, Jewish history, and Jewish philosophy.
The songs are something of an incentive for children, for whom it may be difficult to stay up late into the night until the conclusion of the seder; the songs have the cadence and repetition common to children's songs even today, hundreds of years after they were composed. The tradition of the long, long seder begins in the Talmud and is addressed in the Magid section of the seder; the rabbinic debate over the number of plagues, addressed in Mets102's diary earlier in this series, occurred during a seder that lasted all night, as we read in the Haggadah:
A tale: one Passover eve, Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Joshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, Rabbi Akiba, and Rabbi Tarfon reclined together at B'nei Brak. They told and retold the story of the Exodus from Egypt all through the night until their disciples came running to tell them: "The time has come to read the morning shma, the time has come to recite the morning prayers."
We are taught that the person who elaborates on every nuance of the story is praiseworthy, but that can be difficult for a child. In our family, we had a number of strategies for dealing with that, including making the seder as interactive as possible, but part of the strategy was reminding the children that they'd get to sing all these songs at the end.
And this, after all, is the heart of the seder: to educate our children about the history, tradition, and culture of their people. As we also read earlier in the seder, in the passages about the Four Children (traditionally Sons, but we prefer the more egalitarian version):
And what about the child who does not even know how to ask the question? You begin by quoting from the Torah: "And you shall tell your child on that day, 'We do all this because of that which God did for me when I came out of Egypt.'"
This is the essence of our tradition. The Hebrew word for tradition, mesorah, comes from the root limsor -- to communicate. We are obligated to communicate our tradition to our children, and our tradition includes not only the story of the Exodus from Egypt but the story of the story -- the historiography, the elaboration, the midrash, the myriad interpretations and reinterpretations, all of which led us to become who we are today.
And in that spirit, let us refer back to the poem I posted at the start of this diary in the context of the words of the Prophet Isaiah:
And many peoples will go and say, "Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and we will learn God's ways and walk in God's paths." For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And God shall judge between the nations and shall decide for many peoples, and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, and neither shall they learn war anymore.
In our house, this is the vision when we say "next year in Jerusalem." It's not about claiming more for ourselves or excluding others. It's about making room for everyone, making things better for everyone, and building a better world for our children and our children's children. And if our children should happen to learn a little something along the way during a night of celebration, so much the better.
Have a blessed Passover.
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