Parshas Pesach Edition
Yes. You read that correctly. Passover eggs. Easter’s not the only show in town.
It is a time-honored Pesach tradition to eat eggs dipped in salt water at the beginning of Shulchan Oreich, the Passover Seder meal. [This is in addition to the egg that is traditionally placed on the Seder Plate alongside the shank bone.]
Many reasons for this custom have been suggested by the various commentators over the centuries. I would like to share a few of them with you:
(1) Eggs are traditionally eaten by mourners as they are round and thus symbolize the “wheel of mourning†that rolls around the world and eventually affects everyone. In addition, eggs have no crack or opening, like the mourner, whose mouth is closed in silence. And since Tishah B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av and the saddest day on the Jewish calendar (as it commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Holy Temples in Jerusalem and the exile of the Jewish people), always falls out on the same day of the week as does Passover (so, for example, this year, Passover begins on a Saturday night, and so does Tishah B’Av), we are thus reminded of our mourning and sadness even at this festive Passover meal, so we eat eggs like mourners do. [On the positive side, we have a long-standing tradition that the Messiah, the future redeemer of the Jewish people, will be born on Tishah B’Av, which gives us hope and consolation.]
(2) Eggs as a sign of mourning are also eaten at the Passover meal to remind us that ever since the Holy Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. we are missing the Korban Pesach (Paschal Lamb), an integral part of the Passover Seder.
(3) We eat eggs to mourn the loss of our great and beloved forefather Abraham – the very first Jew to walk the planet – who died on Passover Eve.
(4) We mourn the calamities that befell the Jewish people on the first day of Passover: Our long and bitter exile in Egypt was first decreed on this day at the Covenant Between the Parts (see Genesis 15:7-21); Our matriarch Sarah was forcibly taken to Pharaoh’s house on this day (see Genesis 12:10-20); The persecution and suffering of the Jewish people in Egypt began in earnest on this day, and for this reason the Jews already mourned on the first day of Passover while yet in Egypt. So we eat eggs to commemorate their mourning.
(5) We eat eggs at the Passover Seder meal to symbolize that G-d ‘desired’ to redeem the Jewish people from Egypt with an outstretched arm, as the Hebrew word for egg, beitzah, means “desire†in Aramaic.
(6) As a rule, the more you cook a food, the softer it gets. The exception to this rule is the egg which gets harder the more it is cooked. This is exactly what happened to the Jewish people in Egypt as well, as it says: “But as much as they would afflict it [the Jewish nation], so it would increase and so it would spread out…†(Exodus 1:12).
(7) Just as an egg has no “mouth†and thus can’t “speakâ€, so it is with all our enemies who spoke against us saying that since the Jewish people were not redeemed until now they would never be redeemed, but now their mouths have been shut and they can no longer speak.
(8) Eggs represent galgal ha’chozeir, the “circle of lifeâ€, the cycle of birth and death, and so we eat them on Passover night to allude to the galgal ha’chozeir that is our Jewish history – that first our ancestors were enslaved and mourning their lot in Egypt, and at the end G-d took them out of bondage to joy and freedom. And just as the galgal ha’chozeir turned in our ancestors’ favor way back when in Egypt, so do we, their descendants, pray that G-d take us out of our exile and bring us to the Land of Israel with the coming of the Messiah speedily and in our day. Amen.
HAVE AN “EGGâ€-CITING PASSOVER!
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