Jethro is the ultimate independant renaissance man. Yet his interest is solely universal, and not for personal gain. The Bible bestows the highest honor upon him, by naming the climactic chapter of the Giving of the Ten Commandments after Jethro, ie. "Yitro".

• Jethro in Rabbinic Literature - Wikipedia
• Yitro / Exodus 18:1 - 23 Wikipedia

1. Jethro was the first to utter a benediction to God for the wonders performed for the Israelites (comp. Exodus xviii. 10).

2. Such a thing had not been done either by Moses or by any of the Israelites (Sanh. l.c.; Mek. l.c. 2).

3. Jethro knew that God was greater than all the gods (comp. Ex. xviii. 11), because he had previously worshiped all the idols of the world (Mek. l.c.; Tan. l.c.); but at the same time he did not deny to idols all divine power (Yalk., Ex. 269)

• Sedra of Yitro - Jethro introduces the judicial court system where a man is judged by a jury of his peers
• [(Parsha Yitro / Exodus 18:1 - 23)Hebrew/English

-------------------------------------------

2. Why the number 4 dominates much of the Haggadah?

Read:

The Four Mothers:

• Sarah
• Rebekah
• Rachel
• Leah

If we had no mothers we would have no sedarim. Remember this, and at your Seder thank the mothers there for the hard work they have put in - for the Seder and throughout the year. That is why the number four rightly dominates the Seder.

Show your appreciation.

Chag sameach

----------------------------------------------

2a

Another 4 Women:

Now that Number four has been mentioned to be connected to the Four Mothers, what about the other Four women without whom Moses' could not have achieved his mission to free the Israelites?

Note: Click the links Bitiah and Zipporah and read their bio's. Both were ironically not Jewish by birth, but both were indispensable to the story of the Exodus!

• Yocheved, Mother
• Miriam, Sister
• Bithiah, Pharoah's Daughter
• Zipporah, Wife

----------------------------------------------

Re. 2a-1

Just a small observation to the comment above that Bithiah and Zipporah were not Jews by birth. If I am correct, neither were the Four Mothers that are listed.

• 1. Sarah was related to Abraham, and Abraham's family were pagan idol worshippers.
• 2. Rebecca, Issac's wife was the sister of 'Lavan the Aramean, who is a pivotal character mentioned in the Haggadah, ( see below ). Lavan, too was a pagan idol worshipper.
• 3. Both Rachel and Leah were Lavan's the Aramean's daughters and thus grew up with idol worship!

Perhaps one message here is that you should judge each person only by their personal merits.

Daughters and siblings are not negatively stigmatized because of Lavan's pagan background. So, no matter if you came from a family of slaves, or whatever origins you have, you are the master of your own destiny and should be judged purely as a person in your own right.

However, it is Lavan's deceitful actions, not his paganism, that creates cataclismic consequences for the Israelites. He is thus possibly pointed out as an example of how one's action's can completely unknowingly reverberate down throughout history.

• Laban - Wikipedia

Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer explains in his Hukkat HaPesach that Laban was, in fact, the primum mobile of the entire Exile and Exodus saga.
Rachel was Jacob's divinely intended wife and could hypothetically have given birth to Joseph as Jacob's firstborn with rights of primogeniture. In this counterfactual, Jacob's favoring Joseph's succession as the leader of the fledging nation of Israel would have been seen as perfectly normal and fitting, given the customs of the time. >No older brothers would have felt cheated and jealous, and Joseph would not have been sold into slavery. Thus, there would have been no need for Jacob's family to be sent to Egypt to unite with Joseph.
In actuality, Laban married Jacob to Leah first, causing Leah's sons to precede Joseph in birth order, so that they felt justifiably outraged when their father seemed to violate societal norms by treating his youngest son as his heir, in preference to his older sons' natural and legal rights.

In this way, Laban can be seen as symbolically "having uprooted all", by his duplicity, which resulted in the severing of the Patriarch's family tree before the Children of Israel could become more than a single small family.
Lavan's name can also be seen as symbolic in this matter: it means "white", the visual representation of purity, without visible stain, symbolizing those evenwithout such apparent evil motives whose actions nevertheless result in undesirable outcomes.

--------------------------------------------------

Re. 2a-2

Abraham had received a prophecy that his descendants would be strangers for 400 years in a land that was not theirs, and they would be afflicted, and those that afflicted them would be judged. They would return home to their own land with great riches.
Does this mean Egypt? Maybe it was Lavan who afflicted them?
Is this why Lavan Lavan appears in the Haggadah?
For how long was Jacob a stranger in Lavan's house?
Was it 400 years?
Were the people in Egypt for 400 years?
What is the significance of 400? Is it related to the number four in the Seder?

-------------------------------------------

2b.

Read --- Perhaps because the Story of the Exodus is about ascendance from slavery to self actualization the number four predominates to represent this world and how it works. ie.

• God - The 4 letters of the Tetragrammaton-the name of God.
• Mankind - Four is the number of nucleobase types in DNA & Four Blood Types
• Nature as four-dimensional – time and three-dimensional space. Plus, Four Mathematical rules: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division.
• The World - The 4 Elements: Fire, Air, Water and Earth.
• Four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter.
• Four parts of a day: night, morning, afternoon, evening.
• Four cardinal directions: north, south, east, west.

find more 4 possibilities . . .

• The Number 4 - Wikipedia

----------------------------------------------

2c

The Hidden Fifth (Dimension of the Seder)

Each four in the Haggadah has a hidden fifth part, which Rabbi Jonathan Sacks... writes about in his Haggadah. See if you can find the fifth part of each four in the Haggadah. Two hints to get you started:

1. - We drink four cups - but there's a fifth cup that we do not drink

2. - There are four children at the seder (the four sons), but The Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote about the fifth son who isn't there.

We welcome your responses and additional insights . . .

------------------------------------------------

Re: 2d -1

Could it be that since the number 4 perhaps represents this world, i.e. as mentioned, "Nature as four-dimensional – time and three-dimensional space", that number five then equals trancedance into the spiritual dimension, ie. 5th dimension?

Therefore Elijah's (other-worldly) cup represents this fifth spiritual dimension?

-------------------------------------------------

Re: 2d -2

Again from Echad Mi Yodea - Who Knows One--- Who knows Five?

Five are the Books of the Torah. Is the Torah what connects us between this four-dimensional world of time and space - into the fifth spiritual dimension?

-------------------------------------------------

Re: 2d -3

The Torah as the trip tik guide to follow as a connecting path between the physical and spiritual dimensions is indeed a very interesting thought. Thank you for bringing that up.

It is strange too that the Israelites were not led in a direct route out of Egypt, but wandered for 40 years ( a multiple of 4 ) in the desert.

---------------------------------------------

Re: 2d -4

Note that 40 appears a lot in the Torah and other Biblical literature. Think of the

• 40 days of the Flood, and the
• 40 days spent by Moses each time he ascended Mount Sinai.

What other instances of 4 and 40 can you find?

Consider also the 4 corners of the tzitzit that remind us of heaven and of all the commandments of the Torah.

------------------------------------------------

Re: 2d -5

So, the Seder might be thought of as a physical re-enactment of the challenges we have to overcome to achieve redemption from slavery in Egypt by ourselves. Like the Torah, this is guide to follow that will enable us to transcend the narrow confines of (Egypt) representing the limitations and boundaries of our lives---and thus the ability to ascend to a higher spiritual dimension of existence.

Would the 40 have something to do with 4 representing this four-dimensional world of time and space and the 10 representing the 10 heavenly Sefiroth?

-----------------------------------------------

3. Why the name "Passover" a word usually used as a euphemism for Passing Over, from one side to another, from one world to the next?

We call Pesach = Passover.

• The Torah never calls the festival, Pesach.
• The Torah calls Passover "Chag HaMatzot" = the Festival of Matzot.

Why?

----------------------------------------------

Re: 3a-1

The Torah calling Passover "Chag HaMatzot" makes sense.

The Torah is a moral and ethical guide or template to help humanity achieve spiritual transcendance, and Matzah is a symbol of humilty, as opposed to raised dough which symbolizes inflated ego and arrogance, and it seems that to achieve spiritual ascendance you need to have the humility to empty yourself of all egocentric traits.

Humility though is not at all the same as being self deprecating, meek and low . Moses is said in the Bible to have been the most humble of men.

Wikipedia: The other reason for eating matzah is symbolic: On the one hand, matza symbolizes redemption and freedom, but it is also (lechem oni), "poor man's bread."

Thus it serves as a reminder to be humble, and to not forget what life was like in servitude.

Also, leaven symbolizes corruption and pride as leaven "puffs up". Eating the "bread of affliction" is both a lesson in humility and an act that enhances one's appreciation of freedom.

b. The Name Passover/Pesach?

On the otherhand, from our earhtly point of view, the "passing over" the houses of the Israelites by the Angel of Death is the seminal point of the celebration. How can anyone forget the epic scene in the "Ten Commandments" when the sinister green mist slowly spreads throughout the land of Egypt killing all the first born of the land?

c. Why doesn't the Torah ever call the festival of Passover, Pesach?

This one is tough. The only thing that it possibly might be, is that it is a reminder of the Pascal sacrifice, and any killing of a living creature is insensitive at some level and espially a spiritual level such a primitive physical act is unseemily. Passover is a festival to encourage human growth from human baseness, with primitive needs, to a higher intellectual, and sensitive spiritual level.

-----------------------------------------

Re: 3a-2

"The only thing that it possibly might be" is dangerous language and invariably inaccurate. There are always many answers.

Perhaps it has something to do with the matza being what we do on Earth, so that is what the Divine calls the Festival, recognising our contribution.

On the other hand, the passing over is what the Divine did for us, so that is what we call the Festival, recognising and acknowledging His actions.

--------------------------------------------

Re: 3a-3

Passover or Passed Over?

There is also a very transcedental feel to the word "Passover" ie. "Pass Over".
You never pass over the street, or something common place.

Passing Over is euphamistic for crossing over from this world to the next.

You also pass over boundaries, great obstacles, challenges, grades, perhaps you can pass over to another dimension.

The irony is that on Passover, we did not pass over, but we were Passed over! However, as mentioned by someone before, perhaps the whole point of the Passover Seder is for us to learn how not to be passed over, and to learn to "Pass Over by ourselves " without help, and reach a high level of freedom.

----------------------------------

4. Is Passover connected to Purim?

There definitely seem to be interesting similarities between the Esther, the heroine of Purim, and the Hero of Passover, Moses.

Purim:

1. Esther in Megillath Purim is orphaned--she is brought up by a cousin.
2. Esther lives most her life in a foreign palace away from her Jewish brethren.

Passover:

1. Moses, in the Exodus story that is central to Passover, is brought up by proxy caregivers as if he were orphaned.

2. Moses also lives in a foreign palace with strangers for most of his life away from his Jewish brethren. ie. He is thought to have been around 80 years old at the time of the Exodus

Yom Kippurim

The challenges and adversity that connects both Moses and Esther make them both fit well into the characteristic parameters of Geni's project. Inspirational Luminary Guides, "wild cards of genealogy".

Since Yom Kippur is a perfect time for self introspection in a foreign palace, that of the soul, away from all commitments. Stop and listen to your still small inner voice and then you might suddenly notice and see that truly very often genius and greatness emerges forged from the crucible of physical challenge, discrimination, despair and abandonment and not in pristine impeccable pedigrees and environments. Change your focus and you might find genealogical treasure where you least expect it in your own family.

Answers we have received so far from the Purim Project:

1. 1

What if the Passover Haggadah is an operating manual geared for personal elevation and self actualization in this world, just as the Torah is a guide how to achieve spiritual and universal elevation---both are guides to help orient us through the intellectual process of finding ourselves and learning how to work well together in the world, and thus achieve elevated spiritual insight.
Furthermore, what if the purpose is to link what we learn from the searching and questioning of everything we see, use, and do on Passover, to a midway point on Yom Kippur, which is also a time of intensive soul searching and questioning and continuing on to the ultimate goal of arriving at a level of self actualization, faith, trust and maturity such as existed in the Purim story!

1. 2

Purim has no mention of God whatsoever, yet the hidden hand of God is everywhere. The story of Purim is replete with startling coincidences that thwart court intrigues, diabolical plots and a heinous nihilistic scheme. The reverse is true in the Passover Haggadah, which goes out of its way to point out the overt hand of God in the story of the Exodus.

1. 3 Passover, a Torah mandated holiday to be observed without fail by every generation, is ironically abrogated by a fast initiated by Esther a little known Jewish orphan, chosen in a beauty contest as the Persian King’s new wife.
2. 4

In the story of Purim, inconceivably the entire Jewish population unites to observe this "questionable" three day fast over Passover on Esther's behalf, and no matzah, maror or any symbolic Passover foods were to be consumed thus abrogating the mitzvah of Pesah.
So why the reason for this puzzling fast . Taanit Esther, which thus strangely connects Purim to Passover by the way it abrogates it?
One of the main lessons of Purim is that there are nocoincidence in life. Though indiscernible, the hidden hand of God is obviously at work throughout Megillat (Story) of Esther' .
In contrast, the Passover Haggadah (Story) elaborates painstakingly on the overt hand of God in the miracle of Passover. In fact, the very essence of the story of Passover is of God’s clear intervention in freeing the Israelites from slavery!
So, could it be that one connection is in the timing of the Holidays? Timing is in fact the very essence of what constitutes the underpinning of most miracles.
Passover falls in Nissan—the “First” month of the Jewish Calendar. So perhaps the Haggadah is essentially a beginner’s guide to a year long soul searching and questioning process.
Yom Kippur’s emphasis on introspective soul searching is thus indeed the midway point.
Purim, which falls exactly a month before Passover, and therefore the final month in the Jewish Calendar is a graduation celebration in that we have attained the insight, trust, and faith to no longer need saving by overt miracles.'
Note: The Fast of Esther is observed these days for only one day, the day before the joyous Festival of Purim.

1. 5

Talmud Bavli Megilla 6b discusses in which month of Adar should the Megilla be read and Purim be celebrated in the case of a leap year when there are two months of Adar.

We would expect the answer to be the first month of Adar because we don't "pass over" the opportunity to celebrate and fulfil a commandment at the first opportunity.

The reason given for the second month of Adar - which is what we practice - is to keep the two redemptions - Purim and Pesach - together.

1. 6

Ironically, the weekly Torah reading around the time of Passover deals with purification process for Yom Kippur. So, this fact seems to also agree with the 1. Passover - 2. Yom Kippur - 3. Purim analogy mentioned previously.

--------------------------------------

The Legend of Serach Bat-Asher

Serach was a child among the 70 who descended into Egypt with Jacob; the only one still alive when 600,000 left Egypt with Moses; still alive when Joshua entered the Promised Land; still alive even after she died.

There is, a Talmud-era story about Rav Yochanan teaching about the Red Sea, how the Shechina’s light glowed through the sea walls as if through a lattice. Serach appeared and the survivor corrected Rav Yochanan: No, she said, the light was clearer than through a lattice; it was as if though a window (an important, if esoteric, mystical distinction). “Taman Havina,” she said in Aramaic. “I was there!”

(The Serach-Yochanan dispute is poetically reconciled in the Song of Songs, “My beloved is like a gazelle or young stag… behind our wall, looking through the windows, gazing through the lattice.”).

“When Serach was at a Passover seder, as she was many times,” writes Buxbaum in his supplement, “if someone said something that was inaccurate, she was not shy about correcting him… ‘I was there,’ ‘Hayiti Shom.’”

All Jewish souls – past, present and future – were at the Exodus, too, say the mystics, and that is why, says Buxbaum, though Serach was there physically, “our souls were present, and we can say: ‘We were there, too!’”

Serach was there. She was everywhere. As Buxbaum tells it, when Joseph sent his brothers back to Jacob, they worried that Jacob would die of shock upon hearing that Joseph was alive. “So they asked Jacob’s favorite granddaughter, seven-year-old Serach… wise beyond her years, to gently break the news to him. Serach sat near her grandfather and played the harp as she sang: ‘Joseph is alive and rules over Egypt,’” singing the song over and over until Jacob realized its truth, the holy spirit (which had left Jacob in the years he mourned for Joseph) returning to him. In return, Jacob blessed little Serach:  “Because you brought me back to life… I bless you that you never taste the bitterness of death.”

When Moses came on the scene, the elders went to Serach, because she was the only one alive, after more than 200 years, who remembered the old code words with which the redeemer could be authoritatively identified, (the words, “Pakod Pakaditi,” “I have surely remembered you.”)

When it was time to leave Egypt, and Moses was searching for days to find Joseph’s coffin, to fulfill the pledge that Joseph made the people swear, that they would not leave Egypt without him, it was only Serach who could remember where the Egyptians sank Joseph’s iron coffin at the bottom of the Nile.

And at the Red Sea, in Buxbaum’s script, an Israelite woman “saw greater visions than the visions seen by Ezekiel the Prophet… That female slave was Serach Bat-Asher.” And Serach (or rather the one who reads her part in the supplement) replies: “The Red Sea parted and the Heavens opened and I saw visions of God. I saw the Holy One above and the Shechinah below and myriads if angels watching us as we walked through the sea on dry land. I was there!”

And everyone at the seder can say: “We were there, too!”

Serach, explains Buxbaum, means “span” or “overlap,” as she united the generations and unites them still. He explains, just as it is written that “Elijah, who visits every seder, will repair the breach between parents and children, ‘turning the hearts of parents to their children and the heart of children to their parents.’ Serach will repair the breach between men and women, turning the heart of husbands to their wives and the heart of wives to their husbands, if we listen to her voice.”

Buxbaum’s supplement ends with the call: “Serach Bat-Asher! Serach Bat-Asher! We believe that you can visit our seder and we invite you to come. We do not want to be clever and close the door to mystic vision…. May we merit seeing you and greeting you. And if you appear as a young girl [or] an ancient woman… may we recognize you! Teach us the deepest lessons of the Passover story. Teach us how to bring the final redemption.”

After all, she was there. And we were there, too. “Serach at the Seder” may be purchased in PDF or as a book at http://www.jewishspirit.com
 This supplement to the Haggadah is a poetic, romantic rendition of Serach’s story, based on extensive footnoted sources from Biblical, Midrashic and Aggadic texts. The story is arranged as a play for eight participants at the seder, or it can be studied on its own.

----------------------------------------

Elijah the Prophet

Elijah the Prophet & the Seder Rabbi Shomo Riskin
PARSHAT TZAV-SHABBAT HAGADOL
(Leviticus 6:1-8:36)
“Behold, I send you Elijah the Prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of the Lord. And he [Elijah] will turn [back to G-d] the hearts of the parents through their children and the hearts of the children through their parents.” (Malachi 3:23-24).

The Shabbat before Passover is called Shabbat Hagadol (the Great Sabbath), a phrase deriving from the last verse of the prophetic portion read on that day, which declares that G-d will send Elijah the Prophet on the “great day” of the Lord right before the coming of the redemption.

Let us attempt to link Elijah to our Passover Seder in a way more profound than merely opening the door for him and offering him a sip of wine.

Our analysis begins with another Seder anomaly, the fact that we begin our night of freedom with the distribution of an hors d’oeuvre of “karpas” (Greek for vegetation or vegetable, often parsley, dipped in a condiment).

The usual explanation for this practice is that vegetation emerges in the springtime. Passover is biblically called the Spring Festival, and so we dip a vegetable in salt water, reminiscent of spring renewal emerging from the tears of Egyptian enslavement.

Rabbi Shlomo Kluger, in his late 19th-century Haggadah, suggests another interpretation. The Hebrew word “karpas” appears in the opening verses of the Book of Esther, in the description of the “hangings” that were found in the gardens of King Ahasuerus’ palace, where the great feast for all his kingdom was hosted; karpas (white cotton) joined with turquoise wool. Rashi connects the term “karpas” in the sense of material with the “ketonet passim,” the striped tunic that Jacob gave to his beloved son, Joseph.

The Jerusalem Talmud additionally suggests that we dip the karpas in charoset (a mixture of wine, nuts and dates), adding that the haroset is reminiscent of the blood of the babies murdered in Egypt. In our case, the karpas would become symbolic of Joseph’s tunic, which the brothers dipped into goat’s blood and brought to their father as a sign that his son had been torn apart by wild beasts when in fact they had sold him into Egyptian slavery.

Why begin the Seder this way? The Talmud criticizes Jacob for favoring Joseph over the other brothers and giving him the striped tunic. This gift, a piece of material with little monetary value, engendered vicious jealousy resulting in the sale of Joseph and the eventual enslavement of the Israelites for 210 years.

The point of the Seder is the retelling (“haggadah”) of the seminal experience of servitude and freedom from generation to generation. Through this, all parents become teachers. They must inspire their children to continue the Jewish narrative of identification with the underdog and the outcast. They must imbue in their offspring insistence upon freedom for every individual created in G-d’s image, and faith in the ultimate triumph of a world dedicated to peace and security for all.

This places an awesome responsibility on the shoulders of every parent: to convey the ethical monotheism, rooted in our ritual celebrations and teachings, to their children and eventually to all of humanity. Hence, parents must be warned at the outset not to repeat the tragic mistake of Jacob, not to create divisions and jealousies among their children. Instead, we must unite the generations in the common goal of continuing our Jewish narrative.

What has this to do with Elijah the Prophet, who is slated to be the herald of the Messiah, the announcer of the “good tidings of salvation and comfort”? Our redemption is dependent on our repentance and the most necessary component of redemption is “loving our fellow as we love ourselves” – the great rule of the Torah taught by Rabbi Akiva.

Loving humanity must begin with loving our family – first and foremost, our nuclear family. We read in the prophetic portion of this Shabbat that Elijah will bring everyone back to G-d by uniting parents with their children and children with parents. The biblical source of sibling hatred (the Joseph story), which has plagued Jewish history up to and including the present day, will be repaired by Elijah, who will unite the hearts of the children and the parents together in their commitment to G-d.

Toward the end of the Seder, we open the door for Elijah and welcome him to drink from the cup of redemption poured especially for him. But if Elijah can visit every Seder throughout the world, surely he can get through even the most forbidding kind of door. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menahem Mendel Schneerson, teaches that we open the door not so much to let Elijah in as to let ourselves out. The Seder speaks of four children, but what about the myriad “fifth children” who never came to a Seder? We must go out after them and bring them in – perhaps together with Elijah, whom we will need desperately to unite the entire family of Israel around the Seder table.

-----------------------------------

Pesach Sheni