Passover - A Guide to Relationships

Jewish holidays mark some of the Jewish people’s Greatest Hits. Passover is the time of the most sublime spiritual levels ever reached by the Children of Israel, when G-d Passed Over them in Egypt, and when they encountered Him again in the miraculous moments of the splitting of the sea.

On the other hand, the highest spiritual point ever reached by an individual human being was when Moses spoke with G-d face to face at Mount Sinai – that’s the holiday of Shavuot.

Interestingly, between those two festivals comes a long stretch of not just uncelebratory but downright somber time, called the Omer – a time of personal growth work, and of mourning for a group of Torah scholars who failed to properly engage in it.

What’s the meaning of this?

Holiday Encounters

Holidays in the Torah are called mo’ed, meaning a meeting. The festivals are days when we encounter G-d and live in relationship with Him; but each one has a different flavor.

What is the difference between Passover and Shavuot?

One clear distinction is that on Passover, G-d picked us up from the proverbial and literal dirt, raising us to incredible heights as a unilateral act of kindness. The Jews were performing no mitzvos, learning no Torah – in fact, they had picked up some nasty idolatrous habits from the Egyptian neighbors. And yet G-d took us under His wing nonetheless and made us into a holy nation, capable of experiencing revelations like never before and never again.

Passover, then, is a time of heady excitement, of unearned glory, of thrill beyond the natural order.

But by Shavuot, the Jewish people had been given mitzvot to do, boundaries to observe; they had to (again, metaphorically and literally) cross the perilous desert to arrive at the mountain. It was a tremendous spiritual achievement, and the high they experienced there was much more a product of their own efforts – and therefore more real to them and more enduring.

And the Omer represents that period of work – the slog through the desert to reach the mountain.

Personal Encounters

This is all very beautiful. But let’s bring it a little closer to home, shall we?

The Torah is not just a historical record; it is a guidebook for life. The relationship between G-d and His people is echoed in human life in every marriage between man and woman.

Doesn’t this ring true?

The beginning of a marriage is marked by huge festivities, by excitement and champagne and a honeymoon, and this between two people who frankly don’t know each other all that well. (I am referring here even to couples outside the religious Jewish community. I am a marriage counselor; I can assure you that two young professionals in their twenties simply don’t know each other like a pair of grandparents do come their jubilee anniversary.)

And then comes the slog.

The headiness wears off. Life becomes a day-by-day progression of work, childrearing, and practicalities of all stripes in which we are responsible for generating and maintaining the passion, the closeness, the meaning. It’s hard work. Marriage can be a struggle at times.

And this is normal.

It’s written in our history. After the day comes the night. After the rise comes the fall. The middle phase is a desert, and it can feel dry and harsh. But it is in that challenging environment that we are called to do the personal work to make the marriage something special. Something great. Something real.

And indeed, after the night again comes day. As Shavuot comes on the other side of the Omer – a time of mutual closeness, of a deep, enduring relationship that was earned and not gifted – so does the real marriage come only after a long period of work. For a marriage is not a wedding; it is surely something you want to last far longer than one night or one week.

Personal work is not what we have to “get through” to achieve the prize; rather, it is what creates a prize worth achieving.

The Road Ahead

The festivals will come and go, as they do each year. Our relationship with G-d has ups and downs, just as any normal marriage. The sweetness, the ecstasy of the profound relationship you build by putting in the sweat, the time, the tears – it is a spiritual experience that can hardly be described in words.

Passover is almost here. Let us relish not just the thrill of Passover, but also the work that follows that brings us to the highest heights of connection.