Passover Has Special Meaning This Year
Posted on Mar 24, 2021
Passover is here. For me, Passover means cleaning, shopping, cooking, and giving.
Hag HaPesach is our reminder of our ancestors’ sacrifice and the blood sprinkled on the doorposts of their homes. God “passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, smote the Egyptians and spared our homes” (Exodus 12:27). This year, we’ve all sacrificed. We’ve experienced illness, death, loss of jobs. We have distanced from each other, masking our faces so that our smiles don’t show. Since last year, our clergy and the students at our five institutions of higher Jewish learning have created new ways for us to pray, learn and celebrate from a distance. Hag HaPesach is the perfect time to recognize the sacrifices of the past year. Your donation to the B’Yachad Torah Fund General Campaign will support scholarships, programming and facilities at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles, Schechter Institutes in Jerusalem, Seminario Rabinico Latinoamericano in Buenos Aires and Zacharias Frankel College in Potsdam.
Hag HaMatzot, we remove the hametz, all the leavened foods, from our homes. We eat matzah, the bread of slavery, the bread of poverty. During the last year, we watched the reports of unemployment and we witnessed the long lines at food distribution sites. This is the time to share the food we just removed from our pantries and donate to our local food banks and organizations feeding the hungry through the “Stock the Shelves” initiative of the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism.
Z’man Herutaynu, the Season of our Freedom, reminds us that we were slaves in Egypt and now we are free. With freedom comes responsibility. At Ziegler, students participate in the Women’s League Institute on Gender Bias and Harassment. At JTS, students living in the new undergraduate residence hall will have a state-of-the-art Women’s League Study Space. Your donations to the Creating New Spaces campaign will provide these student opportunities.
Hag HaAviv, Festival of Spring, brings to mind new beginnings. Winter has ended and we see the green shoots emerging from the ground. Commencements, ordination of new rabbis, and investiture of new cantors are on the horizon with the excitement of new careers and new homes. We reflect on the past and look to the future. Please, join the Torah Fund Legacy Society, leaving a gift for future generations of students at our institutions of higher education. Thank you to everyone for your continuing donations and support of Torah Fund. Chag Pesach Sameach – Happy and Healthy Passover.
