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Oneg and Shabbat Services Schedule

In person Friday night services are held at 7:30pm – Light Oneg to follow.

This week’s oneg sponsored by Penny and Rabbi.

Join us for Sabbath evening services, Friday at 7:30 p.m. in our sanctuary and through zoom

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torah

Chol Ha’moed Pesach

One of the fascinating, yet obscure, rules that we read concerning the Pascal sacrifice is found in Exodus 12:46: וְעֶצֶם לֹא תִשְׁבְּרוּ בוֹ, no bone [of the lamb] shall you break. This perplexing rule appears rather out of place, especially when contrasted with the numerous rules that the Torah records regarding the Pascal lamb that relate directly to the holiday. Among these rules and instructions are the following: The dramatic slaughtering of the Pascal lamb by all of the congregation of Israel on the 14th of Nissan, the prohibition of eating chametz–leavened bread once the Pascal sacrifice has been offered on the altar, the commandment to eat the Pascal lamb together with bitter herbs, that the eating of the Pascal sacrifice is reserved only for those of the Jewish faith, and that the sacrifice must be eaten together in family groups. After all, what possible relationship to Passover is there to the prohibition of breaking a bone of a Pascal lamb?
The author of the Sefer Hachinuch suggests that the celebration of Passover, and the feast that accompanies the celebration, is seen by the Torah as a celebration by former slaves who have been transformed into an “aristocratic” people. Kings and nobles do not rush from feast to feast, they eat slowly and deliberately. Therefore, the Pascal sacrifice is always eaten within a single house. Kings and nobles do not break the bones to get at a hidden bit of meat or marrow. The former Egyptian slaves were expected to break away from their “slave mentality” and show proper table manners. There is no place here for primitive eating practices, such as breaking the bones of the animals and sucking out the marrow.

Maimonides comes to the exact opposite conclusion, and maintains that at the time of the Exodus, the Pascal offering had to be eaten in haste. Consequently, there was no time for the people to play with the bones. While we today have no time constraints at our Passover seders, we try to recall and reenact the way in which the first Passover was observed.

Like the author of Sefer Hachinuch, the May’am Lo’ez suggests that after the Exodus, the Jewish people were transformed from slaves into nobility. In fact, scripture calls them the “Children of God.” Now that they have reached this new level of sophistication and importance, it is not appropriate for the people to behave in an unseemly manner. That is why Jews throughout history are commanded each year not to break the bones of the Pascal sacrifice to remind them of the great miracles that God wrought in Egypt. After being forced to endure the lowest depths of indentured servitude, the ancient Israelites were raised higher and higher, to this level of true aristocracy.

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