|
Shabbat HaGadol, the Shabbat before Pesach, commemorates the day on which the Jewish people made ready the Korban Pesach (paschal lamb), as it says, “On the tenth of this month, let each one take a lamb for each parental home, a lamb for each household. But if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor who is nearest to his house shall take one according to the number of people, each one according to one’s ability to eat, shall you be counted for the lamb” (Shemot 12:3-4). Why did God command the people to bring the Korban Pesach in the first place? Why not just free them and begin their journey to the Promised Land directly? What greater lesson is there to be learned from this mitzvah?
According to Rav Soloveitchik, the Korban Pesach is so significant, so necessary, because it points to a model of community the Jewish people had not yet known but had to understand, internalize and live in order to realize their true freedom. Says the Rav, “A new fellowship was formed around the paschal lamb; a new community sprang into existence. Being together, living with each other, sharing something many possess in common was made possible by the ceremony of the paschal lamb. The slave suddenly realizes that the little he has saved up for himself, a single lamb, is too much for him. The slave spontaneously does something he would never have believed he was capable of doing: he knocks on the door of his neighbor, whom he had never noticed, inviting him to share the lamb with him and eat together. No wonder our Seder commences with the declaration, ‘Ha Lachma Anya,’ ‘This is the bread of poverty.’ The ceremony of the Passover meal, centered around the paschal lamb, aims at the emergence of the new chesed community – for chesed is the characteristic mark of the free person. The bondsman is not spiritually capable of joining the chesed community; he is too much concerned with himself, too insecure, too fearful regarding the morrow, too humiliated to think of someone else, too frightened and too meek. The birth of the chesed community – of a nation within which people unite, give things away, care for each other, share what they possess – is symbolized by the paschal sacrifice. God did not need the paschal lamb; He had no interest in the sacrifice. He simply wanted the people – slaves who had just come out of the house of bondage – to emerge from their isolation and insane self-centeredness into the chesed community, where the little that man has is too much for himself” (Festival of Freedom, pp. 22-24).
The bringing of the Korban Pesach was not about appeasing God, showing defiance to the Egyptians or just starting a new tradition. The bringing of the Korban Pesach was about creating a new mentality within the Jewish people that would forever change them – their outlook on themselves, their neighbors and the stranger in their midst – turning them from slaves to free men and women via chesed. Chesed is the hallmark of the Jewish people, but this hallmark was founded and only made possible by the Korban Pesach – a ritual designed to require and incorporate “the other” by giving, sharing and celebrating. To be a chesed-community is to be a free-community, and to be a free-community is to be a community of God. The Korban Pesach teaches us all, as it taught our ancestors, the Jewish people require each other in order to be Jews, and to relate to one other not from a spirit of transaction, but from a spirit of love, giving and kindness. There is nothing more Jewish than chesed, and that means there is nothing more Jewish than being free.
This Pesach, may we all share in the bounty of our community. May we celebrate with friends, family and newcomers to our wonderful shul. May we freely and lovingly share our Pesach feast with others, and in so doing, may we feel a spirit of chesed animate our beings, transmitting it to all those around us, so that we may find the freedom we seek, in the service of our people and the Almighty.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Kasher v'Sameach!
- Rabbi Dan
| 
