he people with a ritual. Transposed to modernity, once one diagnoses one’s ‘plague’ – the moral suffering, the neurosis, one may seek help from a therapist.
Similarly, the traditional Pessah cleaning of the house, can itself become a neurosis, as seems to have been the case in Line’s family. Ultimately, it resulted in the sensation of “diminishing the space” and stifling their freedom. Line’s personal haggadah is filled with nostalgia stuck in the layers of the wallpapers and while reading her story, we can feel how those layers overwhelm her.
Our own families carry the haggadot of previous generations, some of them are wonderful and some are tragic, some are useful and some may become our stumbling blocks. Even if we seem settled in a country and in a home, in our minds we may continue to wander with the suitcases of our forefathers and foremothers, to whose baggage we add our own.
Pessah and more specifically the Seder table is often the occasion of passing on these metaphorical suitcases of stories and memories, to the next generation, with all their weight.
We have to sort out our stories, and inwardly “digest” them, before we pass them on. Clearing, cleaning and cleansing may then take on a fuller meaning and be transformative. It doesn’t mean watering down our family story or our popular history, or indeed embellishing it. We simply have to follow them through to be released from the bondage of past generations.
Freeing ourselves is about being able to throw out all that binds us and “ferments” in our interior, be it our homes or our minds.
By so doing, we will eventually rid ourselves of fears and insecurity so as to be able to open our hearts, start anew, ready to be rather than to possess or to grasp, and thus fully enjoy the liberating message of Pessah.
Hag Pessah Kasher vesameah.
Daniela Touati Student rabbi
1 Line,a former high school colleague, of Jewish Franco-Moroccan descent, is now a senior lecturer in Spanish literature, in “Petites histoires de la rue Saint Nicolas” Edition ALLIA p.16-17, translated by Daniela Touati