The Holiday of Passover, Holiday
of Spring is just around the corner.
We are wrapped in the conflicting feelings
of, on the one hand, so much time has passed since the
last Passover, and on the other hand, last Passover feels
like it was just yesterday.
The sense of "so much time has passed"
comes from our participation, like a link in a chain,
a year - after - year, for thousands of years, in the
celebration of our freedom and independence as a nation,
taking responsibility for our fate and guiding our development
for ourselves, towards a more promising, more caring and
more noble future.
For generations we have told our collective
and personal story of the exodus from Egypt. Each of us
experiences this story as if we ourselves escaped from
Egypt, out of our plight.
The feeling of "it happened just
yesterday" was born as soon as the previous holiday
concluded, a special moment in which the internal leaven
was thrown aside. In its wake 365 days of ups and downs
towards "next year in Jerusalem" occurred. Not
necessarily a physical moving up, not necessarily taking
the steps towards the gates of the holy Temple Mount but
instead a spiritual movement up through the continuous
battles to cleanse ourselves.
These two parallel lines - a long line
over the years, a long line of days used in conjunction
allow each of us, at any moment, to be a part of the bigger
picture and part of their own journey.
We wish you, at the close of "Shabbat
Ha'Gadol", the Sabbath which symbolizes the end of
our collective preparations for the holiday of freedom
and the beginning of the month Nissan, a renewed sense
of meaning, both personally and publically. May you each
be blessed with the winds of history blowing at YOZMA,
shaping us in her image. May you also be a part of the
thread connecting us socially and culturally to this place
which promises a better future; this place where we have
so much more to accomplish; this place where we have chosen
to be a part in each year anew.
Next year in Jerusalem!
Happy holiday,
Rabbi Kinneret Shiryon and Rabbi Nir Barkin
Kehillat YOZMA - Modi'in, Israel
