“Prepare for Passover,” Rabbi Elaine Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings

March 27, 2026 | 9 Nisan 5786

Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection as we move toward Shabbat and this coming week, Passover.. You can also listen to it as a podcast.

Preparation for Passover demands our physical attention: cleaning out the hamatz, the leavening throughout the house and restocking with matzah and the many kosher for Passover products — my favorite are seder mints… — shopping and chopping, cooking and cleaning get us moving toward the holiday, even if we are guests at someone else’s seder.

As we approach the holiday, we also begin the internal exercise of empathy. At the core of the seder is the instruction that in each generation, each of us much regard ourselves as if we went forth from Egypt. This is Judaism’s way of pushing us to recognize how others might feel or experience hardship even though we might not be at that moment. Our tradition invites us to open our hearts in the name of what is happening to others.

As we join together to move from degradation to dignity, an important theme of the Seder, I offer this poem by Primo Levi, an Italian writer, chemist, and survivor of Auschwitz. He found meaning and redemption in the Passover ritual toward a place of hope.

May your Seder and Passover holiday bring you new insights and understanding toward a world waiting to be redeemed by our actions and impact in it.

How, tell me, is this Passover Different from all other Passovers?

Light the lamp, open the door wide
So that the pilgrim may enter, be he Gentile or Jew;
Perhaps the prophet is concealed under his rags.
Let him enter and sit down with us;
Let him listen, drink, sing and celebrate Passover;
Let him consume the bread of affliction,
The Paschal Lamb, sweet mortar and bitter herbs.
This is the night of differences
The night we eat the bread of affliction,
The night we lean our elbows on the table,
Since the forbidden is prescribed,
And evil is translated into good.

We will spend the night recounting
Far-off events full of wonder,
And because of all the wine
The hills will prance like rams.
Tonight they exchange questions:
The wise, the wicked, the simple-minded and the child.
And time reverses its course,
Today flowing back into yesterday,
Like a river enclosed at its mouth.
Each of us has been a slave in Egypt,
Has soaked straw and clay with sweat,
And crossed the sea dry-footed.
You too, stranger.
This year in fear and shame,
Next year in strength and justice.

— Primo Levi, 9 April 1982

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Passover!

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Rabbi Elaine Zecher