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Excerpts from "Preparing
Your Heart For Passover"
By Rabbi
Kerry M. Olitzky
Jewish Publication Society
Philadelphia, 2002
From Chapter Three - Setting the Table
In my own home, we like to acquire or make something
special to add to the holiday table each year. Sometimes,
it is something simple, like an additional reading for
the Hagaddah. Other years it has been a new Kiddush
Cup or Elijah's Cup that we purchased during a recent
trip to Israel. When our children were young, it was
frequently something that they made in school. Recently,
we added a Miriam's Cup, which represents the role of
women in the Passover experience. Our china closet is
filled with such artifacts, each containing irreplaceable
memories. By adding something new, we add a personal
memory to the collective memory that the table setting
represents.
We also have to figure out how many people we can squeeze
around the table in our small dining room. Every year,
we come up with a different method
of placing the tables and chairs. Most years the table
stretches into the living room at one corner and into
the kitchen at the other. It seems crazy, but each year
we are able to accommodate the exact number of guests
we have invited, even as the list has grown and it seems
that there is no way we can add even one more person.
Although this is an evening of leisure and comfort,
no one minds being a little inconvenienced at the table.
Inevitably, one of our boys comes home from school and
asks, "Can I invite so-and-so home for seder?" Even
as he asks, he knows the answer. Passover is a time
when "all who are hungry may come and eat." All who
hunger for spiritual warmth and a sense of belonging
to a people are welcome at our table. May they always
find it in our home - and in the home that they will
eventually establish for themselves.
From Chapter Four - Kaddesh: Making Ourselves Holy
According to Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief
rabbi of Israel - before it even became a modern state
- we were liberated from Egyptian bondage in order to
bring liberation to the entire world, but first we have
to liberate ourselves. Thus, our journey toward holiness,
and therefore our preparation, involves two actions.
The first step moves us away from the past. The second
step takes us toward the future. In the midst of this
two-step action, at the moment that we would assume
is the least clearly defined, we gain clarity. Only
by moving toward the future do we understand what took
place in the past. So take your first step by letting
go of the things that burden you from this past year.
Then take your second step toward the life you want
to create for yourself. Consider what you are going
to change, what you are going to do differently.
Joseph and his brothers, we are told in Genesis, did
not understand this notion about moving toward the future
in order to comprehend the past until they neared the
conclusion of their biblical saga of rivalry and separation.
Only after the climax of this biblical drama, when Joseph
revealed himself to his brothers, did he realize that
his brothers' evil act of throwing him in a pit and
selling him to the Ishmaelites, who subsequently sold
him to Potiphar in Egypt, was intended by God to end
well. Once Joseph understood this, he was able to explain
it to his brothers. 
The more one rises in spirit, the more one can accept
suffering with love and rise above both. This is why
the Talmud teaches that "whatever Heaven does is for
the best." We may not fully realize nor appreciate this
idea, but we would not have gotten to this place in
our lives - or to the Seder table - had we not taken
the journey here. The path to holiness is not a straight
line between two points. It is sometimes circuitous
and often includes barriers that bar our way. But every
step we take brings us further along the path.
From Chapter Seven - Finding What Is Lost; Mending
What is Broken
Matzah stays in the digestive system much longer than
does ordinary bread made with leaven. We feel deceptively
full, even bloated. Because of that, prisoners (or,
in the cases of the ancient Israelites, slaves) didn't
have to be fed as frequently. The very substance that
nourished us also represented our downtrodden state
- and eventually became the symbol of our liberation
from bondage.
Through the means of the observance of Passover and
the Seder, we took the very symbol that identified us
as slaves and transformed it into a symbol of our freedom.
Once we were able to fully understand its power, to
wrest our fortitude from it, we were able to wield it
to our benefit. We took our weakness and translated
it into strength. We took hold of the matzah. What was
once used in an effort to break us was made into something
that could heal. And it continued to heal the generations
that made their way through the desert. Our freedom
now has profound meaning for us, because we remember
that we were once slaves and that we, like our ancestors,
have embarked on a desert journey.
From Chapter Nineteen - Motzi: Sustaining Body
and Soul
There are three matzot symbolically placed on the table
- though there will be plenty more to eat for those
who want to do so throughout the meal. Two of these
matzot remain whole; the third, the center matzah, is
broken into two pieces. Half of it has previously been
hidden away (as the afikoman). With this first
blessing (Motzi), we hold the two remaining whole
matzot together, symbolizing the close relationship
that exists between our slavery and our Redemption,
which is only possible as our people stay together.
It is ironic, but we could not have been redeemed had
we not been enslaved. Had it not been for the experience
of slavery, perhaps we might not have developed such
a relationship with God. Traumatic events often bring
us close to God in uncanny, unpredictable way. It is
clear that we could not have tasted the sweetness of
freedom had we not been forced to endure slavery. Therefore,
we hold these matzot together to remind us of the wholeness
in our lives that is only possible with freedom. We
also recognize that we are not fully free unless we
are working to free others. When we recite the second
blessing (al akhilat matzah), we let go of our
hold on the second matzah and instead grasp the remaining
broken piece of the center matzah along with the top
matzah. This action is perhaps our saving remnant. It
emphasizes the broken experience of slavery.
Our people learned a great deal from being broken. We
learned how to live as strangers in other lands. We
learned how to treat the stranger and how to reach out
to him or her. And we learned the value of settling
a land that we could call home. As Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman
likes to say, the experience provided us with this sacred
sense of "landedness" that has identified our people
throughout its wandering.
From Chapter Twenty Four - Finding the Hidden
Self
Sometimes the matzah breaks into more pieces that we
anticipated. We try to divide it into pieces for our
guests, but it seldom breaks the way we planned. We
think that with machine-made, mass-produced matzah that
is scored for breaking, we should be able to evenly
distribute the matzah, but it is an impossible task.
Shemurah matzah does not even try to pretend;
because of the way it is made, its shape is uneven and
inconsistent. There is no way you are going to break
this matzah  easily,
so why bother? (It was not so easy to break up the cycle
of slavery either.) While we would prefer a neat, compartmentalized
world, matzah reminds us that the distinctions in our
lives are not so clearly discernible. While we are all
the same on one level, created in the image of the Divine,
we also are all different. As the rabbis noted, when
we make a mold for a coin, each one is cast the same.
However, in the Divine cast of the human, each one is
essentially the same but existentially different.
When the afikoman is reunited with what remains
of the piece of matzah, we have a sense that the missing
piece of matzah serves to make us whole. As the missing
piece of matzah is joined to its other half, make a
mental list of those pieces that you are working to
bring back together. Imagine the pieces of yourself
being combined once again to form the self you once
were and the self you are yet to be. Then take a bite
of the afikoman. It will taste quite different.
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