Who was at the table at your last Passover Seder, or seder when you were growing up? Take a moment to picture those people. How are they related to you - by blood, by common family, by marriage, by friendship, by need of a place to celebrate the holiday? At my parents' table, here are some of the people I see - my uncle David, my father's brother, singing "Go Down Moses" in a deep bass voice; my cousin Wendy, daughter of my mother's brother, just reaching the age where she suspects that "Elijah," who has just come to the door, is actually Uncle Judah (my father) in a bathrobe and towel-turban; Gittel, my paternal grandmother, chatting with Esther and Alma and Marcy, the daughter, daughter-in-law, and grand-daughter respectively of her long since deceased second husband; Amy, my freshman year roommate (her family lives too far away for her to travel home, and doesn't kasher their house for Passover in any case); Howard, a member of my parents' synagogue who is also one of my father's law partners, and his second wife (and maybe one or both of his daughters from his first marriage); etc., etc.
Passover is in many ways the quintessential Jewish holiday of both family and community. Survey research has suggested that more Jews attend a seder of some sort or another than participate in any other Jewish holiday or ritual. And while seders usually begin with a core group of family members, they often expand to include many others with all sorts of connections to each other. After all, one of the key statements we make at the seder is "Let all who are hungry come and eat." Everyone is, must be, welcome.
Nor, I think, is this an accident. Rather, it is rooted in the original Passover, narrated in this week's parashah.
As the last and most awful plague, the slaying of the first born, looms, the biblical text takes a turn from its prior narrative focus. Instead, it turns to the very specific instructions that Moshe and Aharon are to present to the Israelites for protecting themselves from the coming plague, preparing for their liberation, and marking this occasion in the future. Among the first of these directives is the following:
...on the tenth of this month each of them shall take a lamb to a family, a lamb to a household. But if the household is too small for a lamb, let him share one with a neighbor who dwells nearby... (Ex. 12: 3-4)
Later (both in the order of the Torah, and in Israelite history), the Passover sacrifice and ritual would move, at least for some time, from the local, familial grouping to the centralized center of the Temple in Jerusalem, and there it would not be all who were obligated in bringing offerings to God:
Three times a year - on the Feast of Unleavened Bread, on the Feast of Weeks, and on the Feast of Booths - all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in the place that He will choose. (Deut. 16:16)
This is not to say that women didn't sometimes attend, or couldn't participate if they did - in fact, the Talmud (Pesachim 89a) tells of a father who challenged his children to be first to reach Jerusalem, and his daughters claimed the prize over their brothers - but it does mean that they are not required to participate in the way that men were.
Not so at the first Passover, however. Everyone is expected to participate. This can be seen in the multiple terms that the verse uses to describe who should gather together: family, household, neighbor. Gatherings start with the family unit, but are not limited to it. A household may encompass more than a family - as the 13th century commentator Hizkuni states: "Even if they are not one family and (yet) they are in one household they should take a lamb for themselves" - and even two neighboring households may join together if either is too small on its own. No one may be left out, and no one should be alone.
And so too when redemption comes. An early rabbinic midrash on Exodus, Mekhilta d'Rebbe Shimon bar Yohai, breaks down the words in which Pharaoh finally and truly dismisses the Israelites, in Ex. 12:31, as follows:
"Up, depart from among my people, both you and the Israelites with you...Go, worship the Lord as you said!" --
"you" - (from this) I know only "you." How does one know from Scripture that [this included] also converts and slaves? Scripture states "both you..."
"and the Israelites with you" - which includes women and children. "Go, worship the Lord as you said!" - your [prediction] has been fulfilled. [As it says,] "We will all go, young and old: we will go with our sons and daughters..." (Ex. 10:9).
This last piece of the midrash is a reference to an earlier moment in the parashah, before the eighth plague. Pharaoh's courtiers, having seen the devastation wrought on Egypt by the previous seven plagues, urge him to let the Israelite men go to worship in the wilderness - as Moshe and Aharon have previously claimed the Israelites wish to do. But when Pharaoh appears to relent, and asks Moshe who will go, Moshe replies:
"We will all go, young and old: we will go with our sons and daughters..." (Ex. 10:9).
As noted in "The Torah: A Women's Commentary," Moshe is using a rhetorical devise known as "merism" here: "the figure of speech uses two extremes to convey a totality, as if it said 'and everybody in between'" (358-59). No one is to be left behind. Pharaoh, however, is not yet ready to consent to such a demand, and the plagues continue.
Moshe insists that all must go out of Egypt, and the midrash takes pains to demonstrate that Moshe's demand was met, that everyone affiliated with the community was allowed to leave. Prior to leaving, everyone participates in the first Passover sacrifice. In families and other groupings, everyone comes together and no one is to be excluded deliberately or by careless omission. What I want to suggest, then, is that these two passages reinforce one message. Redemption is collective. It is not thousands upon thousands of atomized individuals who are freed by the Holy One from Egyptian slavery, but a community. Only when we know how to function together, to see ourselves as responsible for each other; only when we come together in families that are bound not just by blood and legal connection, but groupings of people who care for each other even if not related by biology and/or marriage; only when we insist that everyone comes along or no one - only then are we ready for redemption.
Shabbat shalom.