Passover & Nissan

Expressing anger not only hurts others but destroys the person who is expressing anger.

In my pursuit to be “helpful,” I was quickly killing the intimacy in my marriage.

There are two parts to creation, the same way there are two parts of existence.

When we expect our relationship with G‑d to be transactional, when we view G‑d as a cosmic bellhop paying a quid pro quo for our “virtuous” behavior, then neither do we.

Now, Adam is no longer with me. I go to our son’s home for the Seders and listen while each person has a chance to recite aloud a portion of the Haggadah.

We may have left Egypt and still be there.

Every single Jew is a building brick in the process. Every child that comes into the world is a miracle and an entire world. At any age and at any stage, we don’t know what will happen or how.

As I celebrate Passover—the holiday of victory against enslavement—I try to gain a new perspective of the day my classroom teacher forever ruined my childhood friendships.

“Don’t come in here!!!” I shriek, leaping up from wrapping another layer of foil around the table legs to tackle her away from my precious i>chametz-free kitchen.

When we function with consciousness, we are able to pause and formulate an appropriate response using our G‑d-given free choice.

"All my visions of the “perfect seder” had been dashed."

Why on this night—this night of redemption and freedom and hope, a night of protection and faith—why on this night do we have to bring up all that painful part of our past? Can’t we just talk about the good, be happy and move on?

“I have an obligation to tell my children the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Our children don’t even know what charoset is! I have a responsibility to remember and pass on the traditions.” Adam’s voice rang strong.

The four sons represent the kaleidoscope of perspectives we all bring to the table.

My mother told me that I could set my goals as high as I chose and that I could accomplish anything, but I knew that my freedom was limited

“I’ve never felt like this before. I just want to feel like I felt before. I just want to be the woman that I was before … ”

Real freedom comes when we face our inner world.

I look at my children, sticky, stained, standing, twirling, singing. None of them are doing what they should be doing. Or are they?

Some things just have a natural lifespan, and then they cease to serve a purpose.

Ever wonder why, of all the many Jewish holidays, the one that is most observed by the vast majority of Jews is Passover and the Passover Seder.

Our situation may look bleak right now, but we can break free from our own restraints by realizing and accessing our hidden reservoirs buried within.

Each time she came for the Seder, I would breathe deeply, wondering why she came back.

Articulating that there could be life outside of their horrible existence, they have acknowledged the possibility of another reality.

My husband and I had been married for three and a half years, and we desperately wanted children . . .

One bite into the matzah left all of us speechless! We could barely chew it and get it down!

When it was time to burn the chametz, Ruth went to the kitchen table and took the remaining brown paper bag. Much to her horror, there were no chametz pieces inside, only Sascha’s lunch!

Pesach preparation is the Jewish version of extreme sports. Bungee jumping? Hang gliding? Cliff jumping? Feh. Try Pesach cleaning.

It’s not enough to look and be beautiful. YOU have to see your OWN beauty.

Cultivate the greatness within each child, in whichever form it assumes.

I had never done this before—walk into a labor room to help deliver a baby without having met the mother or at least talked to her on the phone first.

In life there is a speed limit. A person can push and push and push, and you know what, you are not going to get to your destination any quicker by trying to go past it...

“Seventy-five years ago, I said this at my grandparents’ Passover table. But since then, I have never heard it until tonight...

We have to relive it, experience it: the pain of it, the miracle of it, the way we hit rock bottom and realized that we had no one to turn to except for G‑d...

We are both slave and slavemaster simultaneously, where our inability to attain freedom is coming from within...

Only once we are free can we speak. Slaves do not speak. They don’t have a voice. And even if they do, they will not be heard . . .

"Getting out of Egypt" means I become consciously aware and free myself of these limitations, living the infinite life I'm capable of. The seder is a template for getting out. That means we must continuously re-enact it not only in each generation, but each day we have the blessing to be here on planet earth...

There are two ways to use the beauty of this world. One way is to walk into the wild in order to escape one’s inner turmoil, the other is to walk into the wild in order to go towards one’s self . . .

Life is like bitter-sweet chocolate. Like chocolate, life is magnificent. Yet most experiences in life have a bitter-sweet flavor...

We had the clothes on our backs and one fresh change for each. With nothing to burden us, the trip was made easier. No more layers of clothing on our bodies or swaying carts dangerously overweight with household belongings. We had each other and a profound sense of gratitude . . .

When we began to recite the haggadah, we all wept. We did not need to add extra discussion linking us to the Israelites’ departure from Egypt and the miracles they experienced. We represented all that was lost as much as we represented the reality of survival. We were not telling the story of the ancient deliverance that night, but were living the contemporary recital of our own survival and the continuation of our people . . .

This cloud I sense does not speak, it only weeps. This cloud is enormous and has been shedding every Jewish tear from the beginning of time . . .

Ironically, the hardest shots to block on WiiFit soccer are the ones that come at you dead center. Indeed, finding my center is the challenge. It's relatively easy to live within any narrowly-defined culture. Yes, it's restraining, but the parameters of making decisions are also easier...

My nausea often renders me incapacitated for hours, even days on end, to which vomiting provides no lasting relief. My days are stained by actual or anticipated smells, and opening the refrigerator has become an act of bravery...

My dreams were so enormous, so vast and mankind-wide in scope that they just hibernated in my mind, stuck like a great blue whale unable to squeeze its way out of a drinking straw...

Five years ago, on the last day of Passover I gave birth to my son, my first born, my long awaited child, and my thought process during his birth changed everything...

Passover is a celebration of what could be considered a moot point. What good does it do me to get out of one prison, if I’m in a different one now?

I think that I’ve had the ebbs and flows of this feeling throughout my life. Sometimes I feel so close to G‑d that I can almost touch Him; other times I feel like more of an empty shell, rather than someone with a G‑dly soul . . .

As a young teen, I hung back in the shadows at parties. It seemed that I alone was never asked to dance. I was too tall, too curly, too dark, too smart… too something. Even though, in retrospect, it was a blessing, nonetheless, the girl I was at that moment and in that place shows up now, in full daylight...

“You take on way too much.” Jab. “You can hardly cope with what you have.” Jab-jab. “You’re hanging by a thread, Girlfriend.” Uppercut. “You are failing.” Ouch . . .

I told my son about how -- as if in an over-the-top horror movie -- the television screen showed another plane hitting the Pentagon. The Pentagon... the place Nancy's husband Scott had gone to work that bright, clear morning...

This skirt has always managed to come with me, from home to home and move to move. I hadn't been able to give it away in the past. It represented the size that I used to be, the size that I tell myself I'll be again...

I try to think back to yesterday, and in my tired, hazy, sleep-deprived state, a funny thing happens. I remember nothing. There is no yesterday . . .

It was one of those moments when you wish you had the magical power to turn back the clock and change the situation. In one split second my toddler had climbed up onto the counter and had jumped down, snatching the tea kettle with him...

So here I am scrubbing and scrubbing. I’ve got my soul on my mind. And I’m talking to myself. I’m saying, “Mimi, scrub it away.”

Moving forward is easier said than done. Especially when we rationalize that maybe it wasn’t so bad where we were, or maybe we should just invest our energy trying to change what we have no power over. Sometimes we might just even want to give up. Or it might seem that by doing nothing but thinking positive, things will just turn on their own. But we must remember that when given an opportunity to change our reality, an opportunity to break out of those chains, we must take it . . .

The thing we hate most about clichés is the fact that they are so often true, especially the ones we wish were the opposite of the truth. There’s an old saying, “It is easier to take a Jew out of exile than to take the sense of exile out of the Jew” . . .

People are busy rifling through the—dare I say it—junk. I must run. Run before I become entangled in that huge mess of possessions, aptly called “gar(b)age sale.”

The thought first occurred to me in the throes of pre-Passover cleaning: What an incredibly easy religion. I don't say it aloud; to do so would elicit hostile stares from all the exhausted people in the room

Passover Seders and antsy kids traditionally go together like matzah balls and chicken soup. Fortunately, it's perfectly possible to prevent the fifth question ("Are we done yet?") and the eleventh plague (restless natives) from showing up at our Passover celebrations...

We emerged from darkness to an unfamiliar light. Between us and the Promised Land was a wilderness. And that moment would play itself out over and over again...

It wasn't that I was sad about going to America for Passover; I was worried about my grandmother. Since my earliest memories Grandma had always been one of the strongest people that I knew...

If there was anyone to be upset with, it was me. Since yelling wasn’t an option, I cried. I felt myself breaking as tears rolled down my cheeks. I looked up and asked, “Why?”

Then last year my husband and I tried something different. We decided to take the commandment of the Seder seriously. Tell it to your children. This wasn’t about us and our experience. This was about telling our children about who we are as Jews, what G‑d has done for us...

It’s difficult to comprehend that beyond being a freak show, cotton-candy castles, ninety-foot alligators and real-life cartoon characters could hold much purpose in a meaningful life. My stomach plunges as I think of American dreams built on the emptiness of fairy tales . . .

I think if there is anything more nerve-racking than cleaning for Passover, it is cleaning for Passover with small children . . .

In modern-day society, it is not always easy to be a woman. We are surrounded by billboards, magazines and actors that form not only our definition, but the world’s definition, of what is beautiful. Blame it on consumerism, but there’s always some product out there that we need to buy in order to “improve” our looks. Sadly, the message we are given is that we are not enough . . .

I couldn’t help but feel her presence when her sister’s great-grandchildren called at the last minute and asked if they could join us for a festive meal. Of course! Come, come! You belong with us!

Boy, did we have birth pangs in Egypt. They enslaved us, they oppressed us, and we weren’t even in active labor yet! G‑d heard our cry, and He speeded up the labor process.

Intensive cleaning takes place in Jewish homes throughout the world. Here is a brief guide to help you tackle the process in your own home.

Here are tried-and-true traditional Passover favorites as well as their modern iterations, chef-tested and family-approved.