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Pesach is about one week away... |
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Posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Thu Mar 26 18:06:41 2015 Are you planning to jump rope at your seder???Yes! After the meal, before afikomen & Birkat ha-mazon. Challenge the kids to make up pesach jumping rhymes, e.g., Pharaoh, Pharaoh, Let my people go How many times will you say “no”? 1, 2, 3, 4… As with other Jewish customs, there is a historic basis for the custom and numerous symbolic explanations. Symbolic Reasons: Rope resembles the whips w/ which the Egyptians beat the slaves. We have the last laugh, turning the whip into a plaything. Thrown on the ground, rope resembles Moses’ staff, turned into a snake. Jumping into the turning rope requires courage, like Nachshon stepping into the sea of reeds. Midrash from the Zohar about King David and the frog: King David was strolling in his garden strumming his harp and singing psalms. A frog sitting at the side of the path began to croak along. King David, who could speak the language of animals, but who was very vain, said to the frog, “Frog! I am known as the ‘sweet singer of Zion.’ How dare you CROAK while I am singing?” “King David,” answered the frog. “It is true you are the sweet singer of Zion. But when you sing your psalms, you serve God only with your voice. In Egypt, we frogs served God with our entire bodies. It wasn’t easy to cover the land, invading homes, jumping on Pharaoh’s bed and his head and his toes and his nose. People beat at us with brooms and stomped on us with their feet. But we knew what God wanted of us and we did it.” King David was chastened and invited the frog to sing with him. Now, after we sing Birkat ha-mazon, we continue singing Hallel, psalms of David, serving God with our voices. Is it not appropriate that we also go outside and jump rope and serve God with our entire bodies, as the frogs did in Egypt? [The Zohar story is retold, with MUCH embellishment in Stories of King David by Lillian S. Freehof (JPS, 1952) The contemporary Haggadah in which our family custom appears is A Family Haggadah II by Shoshana Silberman (Kar-Ben Copies, 1997). The idea appears on p. 45, and the acknowledgement is in footnote 15, on p. 63.] Historic Reason: In 1968 there was a lunar eclipse on the night of the seder. (Because Pesach falls on the full moon of the vernal equinox, if there is a lunar eclipse, it must fall on Pesach, unless it is a Jewish leap year, in which case the eclipse falls on Purim.) The seder included 4 boys of BMtz age, give or take a year , and 2 little girls, one of whom had just learned to jump rope. While the adults lingered over coffee, the kids went outside to see the eclipse. When we called them back in at about 11 o’clock, the boys said everyone should come out, the eclipse was at its peak. We did, and found that the little girls had become bored of the moon and were jumping rope. Before we went back inside, everyone either jumped or turned rope for others. We went back inside, finished the Haggadah by midnight, and continued singing for 2 hours. The next morning, everyone who had been at the seder was at shul, and all agreed it had been the best seder ever. What made the difference? Jumping rope! So we’ve been doing it every year since then. |
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