Passover is My Favorite Holiday!
By Carol Folkerth

Preparing for Passover can be one of the most stressful times in the entire Jewish calendar. The mere thought of all the scrubbing of kitchen surfaces, the house cleaning so that all chametz (leavened products) are removed - let alone the preparation of the Passover Seder - is enough to get anyone into a tizzy, racing around the house.

Yet Passover is my favorite holiday! Given the origins of Passover, it's little wonder that so much of the preparations for the holiday is done at a frantic pace. The story of the Exodus from Egypt is the story of the Jewish people's flight from their bondage, and the sacred struggle to make sense of its lessons for every generation - past, present and future. We therefore participate in the seder, and methodically recount our journey as a people from slavery into freedom.

The food we eat at the seder and throughout the eight days of Pesach are symbolic of the themes of the holiday. We eat the bitterness of enslavement with horseradish, and taste the tears of our ancestors as we dip our greens in salt water. Even as we savor the sweetness of the charoset, the collection of fruits, nuts and wine into a paste, we recall the mortar for bricks our people toiled to make in harsh conditions.

Most of all, the matzah is our connection to that moment in history when we left it all behind and fled toward freedom. Matzah raises our consciousness of the gifts that we enjoy because of that first taste of freedom our people were granted so long ago.

This year, as the first night of Passover falls on Saturday, April 19, may we use this opportunity to slow down long enough to recognize the luxury of our liberation. As we "slave" over preparing our homes for Passover, may we rejoice in the ability we have as a free people to hearken to the needs of those around us who cry for our attention, and then give with our hearts and our hands and our resources.

In that way, we make that freedom matter and our lives full of meaning.