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Open the Door - Pesach 5786
- Rabbi Sarah Weissman
- Mar 27
- 5 min read
March 27, 2026
At last week’s temple board meeting, we were hearing an update on the plans for the community seder (next Thursday evening – please sign up if you haven’t yet!), and we came to the question of hiring security guards for the evening. You won’t be surprised to hear that there was a range of opinions on the subject, with strong feelings expressed on all sides. I thought to myself, how sad it is that we have to spend our time on this conversation, that we live in a world where Jews and Jewish institutions are targets of violence, a world where we are never fully secure. But as soon as the thought crossed my mind, I had a second thought: so what’s new? After all, Jewish vulnerability is an inextricable part of the observance of Passover. And one of our tasks every year is to face that vulnerability with courage, to find a way to celebrate even amid our fear.
Passover has always been tinged with danger. Consider the original seder, the one that the Israelites observe even before leaving Egypt. God commands the people to make a sacrifice, putting the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. And then they’re commanded to eat the Passover sacrifice along with matzah and maror with “your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; you shall eat it hurriedly…” (Ex. 12:11). This is no leisurely festive meal. The Israelites anxiously watch all night to see if they will be spared as God strikes down the firstborn of each Egyptian household. Then they wait, with bated breath, to see if Pharaoh will finally give in and let them go. And when the Israelites finally do leave, the Egyptians chase them to the Sea. The first Passover was anything but boring.
Or consider the story found in the Haggadah about five famous rabbis – Eliezer, Yehoshua, Elazar ben Azarya, Akiva, and Tarfon, who celebrate Passover this way: “They dined at the seder in B’nai B’rak. The whole night long they spent retelling the story of the Exodus from Egypt, until their students arrived and announced to them: ‘Our masters, it is already time to reside the morning Sh’ma!’” It doesn’t sound very dramatic, but here is the back story. These rabbis lived under Roman occupation and were supporters of Shimon Bar Kochba, who led the Jews’ final attempt to regain sovereignty in the land of Israel after the Roman conquest. So some scholars surmise that these rabbis were sitting up all night not telling the story of the exodus, but planning a revolt against Rome. And even if the Sages were really just celebrating Passover, they were doing so during a time when openly practicing Judaism could get you killed. As Rabbi Josh Weinberg writes, “Tradition suggests they were in hiding—perhaps even in a cave—recounting a story of liberation while an empire stood ready to crush them. Their Seder was likely not comfortable…but it was courageous. They spoke of freedom precisely when their freedom was threatened.”
It wasn’t just under Roman rule that celebrating Passover was a risky endeavor. During the Middle Ages, Passover was a particularly dangerous time for European Jews. First, because Passover and Easter often coincide and many Christians still blamed Jews for killing Jesus, so the season was particularly fraught. And second, because of the blood libel, the baseless accusations that Jews killed Christian children to use their blood to make matzah. It was during this time that one part of the Haggadah – a part we often skip – was added. Right after we open the door for Elijah, the Haggadah says, “Pour out your fury on the nations that do not know you, and upon the kingdoms that do not invoke your name, for they have devoured Jacob and destroyed his home. Pour out your wrath on them; may your blazing anger overtake them. Pursue them in wrath and destroy them from under the heavens of Adonai!” These words, taken from Psalms and Lamentations, reflect the anger and pain that medieval Jews experienced, and their desperate desire for an end to their persecution, not to mention an end to their persecutors. The passage has remained in the Haggadah since then. So I imagine that it must have spoken to later generations, to Jews who celebrated Passover as crypto-Jews in Spain or prisoners in concentration camps or refuseniks in the Soviet Union, and also to Israelis who might be having their seders in bomb shelters next week.
I can understand the appeal of this moment in the seder, particularly when people are oppressed and afraid. The Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt describes it this way: “Why my infatuation with this hard-hitting paragraph? I picture the many beleaguered Jews…for whom Passover was a dangerous time. I imagine Jews who spent much of the year fearful that the non-Jewish world might violently turn on them. They knew they would have little recourse to protect themselves…Suddenly for one short paragraph they opened the door of their homes… and publicly told the world what they wished for those who had done them evil. For one brief moment they could let their desire for justice be heard publicly. They did not have to cower in fear….For one brief, shining moment, the Jew stood tall.”
I don’t agree with Lipstadt that this cry for revenge is the only moment when the “Jew stands tall.” The whole seder is a demonstration of our strength in spite of our vulnerability. Rabbi Josh Weinberg writes, “To speak of freedom in a moment of fear is to refuse to let fear define us in the future. To retell the Exodus is to insist that history is not closed, that redemption is not finished, and that we are still on the way…. It reminds us that the Jewish story has never been told in perfect safety— and never in perfect agreement. And yet it has always been told—with courage, with argument, and with an unyielding commitment to the possibility of freedom ahead.” Telling our story and remembering what we stand for is what gives us dignity as Jews.
Lipstadt is right about one thing. Opening the door at the seder is a particularly powerful moment for us to stand tall, just not because we’re about to express our rage and thirst for vengeance. We actually open the door twice during the seder. The first time is at the beginning, before we recite the words, “Ha lachma anya – this is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are in need, come and share the Pesach meal.” The second time is when we open the door for Elijah. So we open the door first to remember our difficult past and present, affirming that our suffering isn’t meaningless. It obligates us to empathy, to love the stranger for we were strangers. And once we have told our story, we open the door again, this time to the future, with the hope that Elijah the Prophet will come in and tell us that the Messiah is on her way. In spite of our fear, in spite of the real dangers we face, we open the door – to empathy and generosity, to hope and faith that a better future is possible.
A Night to Remember, pg 115
