Last Day Pesach 5770 A Feast of Pasta and Pizza? Rabbi Aaron Goldstein 5 April 2010

Today is a rather odd time of transition.

There is a great flurry of activity in Jewish homes preceding Pesach but little in preparation for a return to the secular world. Falling as it has this year, the days of chol ha-moed, the intermediary days felt like holidays as the country went on holiday for Easter. On trips through Jewish areas, this only meant that it was even harder to find somewhere for a coffee as not only had the Jewish cafes shut for Pesach, so had many of their neighbours for Easter.

How will we make a transition back into our secular world? At the end of Pesach, some Jews gorge themselves on everything hametz, leavened, that which had been forbidden to them. Others reserve their feasting to that which was the most missed food. Others still, prefer a gradual reintroduction of hametz, slowly reintegrating themselves into the regular run of the year.

There is a particular celebration of Moroccan Jews, adopted by others over time. It is Maimuna, beginning at the end of the last day of Passover which, according to tradition, is the anniversary of the death of Moses Maimonides' father Maimon b. Joseph who lived for a time in Fez. Tables are set with food and drinks having a symbolic significance, varying according to local custom. These include fresh pitchers of sweet milk, garlands of leaves and flowers, branches of fig trees, and ears of wheat. Usually a live fish (a symbol of fertility) is placed on the table, swimming in a bowl. The menu includes lettuce leaves dipped in honey, buttermilk, and pancakes spread with butter and honey. Some have a "lucky dip," a bowl of flour in which golden objects are placed.

In some places a plate of flour is set on the table with five eggs and five beans and dates set in it. In Oran, vessels of silver and gold are included in the table decoration. Usually, people eat only dairy foods and wafers made of fried dough resembling pancakes, known as muflita.

No meat is to be consumed, although this was not the case for my only real experience of Maimuna, during my 6 week sojourn on the Moshav Peqi’in ha’Hadasha during my gap year. The Moshav was basically home to a couple of huge extended, and unfortunately inbred, families: everyone seemed to be related in some way or another. What I remember most was a deeply spiritual ritual visit and my return that was a celebration solely of this world.

Late in the afternoon, my adopted brothers, who had lost the garb of their ancestors for more Ashkenazi Chasidic clothing, took myself and my friend Simon on a tiyyul, a waking trip. We wondered down into the valley that separated the modern Jewish village from the ancient predominantly Druze village and also home to Jews who had lived their continuously since the second Temple period. We followed a barely visible path that winded its way like a desert snake around dense and strong thickets of gorse.

After about 15 minutes, our guides stopped for seemingly no reason. We looked around and could not reason for this interruption of our tiyyul. Smiling, Mikael pulled back a gorse and there was the entrance to a small cave, its entrance completely obscured by this gorse. Inside was a very limited amount of standing room and what looked like a half-size bath full of spring water.

This cave is famous as the one in which Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his son, Rabbi Elazar ben Shimon, hid from the Romans for 13 years after the collapse of the Bar Kochba rebellion against Roman rule. According to legend, Rabbi Shimon and his son lived off spring water and the fruit of a miraculous carob tree during their years of hiding, and passed the time by writing books about Jewish mysticism. It was there that he is said to have written the Zohar, the most important book in the Kabbalah. We know the latter to be a fiction, having actually been written in the sixteenth century by Isaac Luria. But at that moment, I was filled with a deep sense of awe. A wave of spiritual feeling came over me with the gentle tricking of water, the bleets of goats in the valley below and the birdsong. This was a unique moment that connected me to my ancient heritage. It was unique, because, despite a number of attempts, I never found this cave on my own.

As evening began to fall and we arrived back in the moshav, everyone was out in the streets carrying baskets laden with sweets and flowers, fruit and nuts, each one being borne as gifts for neighbours. In complete distinction to the isolation of my moment in the cave, here was humanity in its greatest form, the most wealthy to the most poor bearing gifts for their neighbours. That evening was a time when disputes were put aside and everyone gathered to share and to celebrate in a feast together.

What a way of transition from the incredible ritual isolation of Pesach back into the regular year.

Today, we mark the Last Day of Pesach by reaching back into our past. We do so in a few moments by entering the cave of our hearts for a still, ritual moment. We mention the names of those who have died in the last six months, a moment for those in mourning with their loved one. To their names we add in our hearts those who we missed from our seder tables and miss in our lives.

And yet we each bear the gift for our neighbour of being there in comfort and support. We are at the midway point in our Jewish year. Those with and without loss will have set out with aspirations for this year, some that are spiritual in nature, others more practical and to do with this world.

May this morning have aided our transition from matzah to hametz, from moments of holiness and quiet spiritual reflection the work of the second half of our Jewish year. May the words of Moses, Miriam and the Israelites of the Song of the Sea and those of David celebrating freedom and the verses of love, of Spring and renewal of the Song of Songs, still ringing in our ears, inspire us to reach higher moments of spiritual awakening and good deeds, so that we might be a source of pride for all those who came before us, and a source of blessing for all those who come after us.

Amen.