Passover — Rabbi Adam Lavitt — Sermons & Writing

In one way or another, we have all been “far off” unable to mark important moments in our lives and those of friends and family – birthdays and shivas, holidays and Shabbat, graduations and weddings – in ways that felt real, with a celebratory hug or comforting touch. So Torah reminds us today we need not feel permanently exiled, like we missed out on something we can never make up. Instead, God invites to come back, to try again another time…. More important than doing things at the right time, is our willingness to try again later, to return to community as we’re ready and able.

Adam LavittMay 28, 2021teshuvah, community, Passover, forgiveness

Transition as Transformation (Shabbat Shemini)

We journey toward the lives we had incrementally, as we navigate, outside our community, a world that still mostly hasn’t had access to the vaccine. While it would be so easy to put our hopes and expectations on hold until everything was exactly the way we wanted it to be, our tradition challenges us to instead use this time intentionally. Torah could have simply instructed us to observe Shavuot — the day we commemorate our gathering at Sinai, right after Passover, our moment of liberation — but it instead instructs us to build in 7 weeks, between these two central moments in our people’s story.

Adam LavittApril 9, 2021transformation, Sinai, Omer, wilderness, liberation, Passover

See No Stranger (Shabbat HaGadol)

Our act of pouring a cup and opening the door to welcome Elijah each year [is] a test of our ability and desire to welcome others — to open our door, our hearts, even to people or experiences we may consider unpleasant or undesirable. [T]his moment in the seder is our chance to make sure our values actually translate into action: How wide do we open our doors, and the doors of our hearts? How ready do we feel to welcome a stranger to our table?

Adam LavittMarch 26, 2021Passover, justice, community, compassion

Getting Free (Shabbat HaChodesh)

Imagine: after 400 years of slavery in Egypt, during which they have been unable to determine their comings and goings, or tell one day from another, our ancestors are now free, have the power to shape their schedule. Rashi imagines God helping out by pointing at the moon as it waxed, and saying to Moses: “when you see the moon in a stage of renewal similar to this…you may proclaim that a new month has begun.” This is a tender moment of transition when God helps our people regain agency by giving them control over their schedules.

Adam LavittMarch 12, 2021Rosh Hodesh, new beginnings, freedom, Passover

Never Again: Expanding Our Hearts

How are we to treat people with little power, people far away from their own families and communities? This is the Torah’s response (Exodus 22:2):

You shall not wrong the ger, nor shall you oppress him; for you were gerim in the land of Egypt.

The Torah repeats this 36 times: lo tonu — “Do not oppress the stranger.” Remember you are a nation of immigrants, recall your answers who fled ancient Egypt, Czarist Russia, Nazi Germany. Don’t build walls that cut you off from those memories. Rather, let these memories expand your hearts across the borders that threaten to cut you off from your past. Let’s welcome those now seeking asylum from violence and uncertainty, who yearn to link their future to ours.

Adam LavittApril 9, 2020Never Again, immigration, compassion, Passover

Passover Seder

Please enjoy this recording of the first night Passover seder I led for Hebrew SeniorLife’s Orchard Cove community.

Adam LavittApril 8, 2020Passover

Shabbat HaGadol

While we as a people have had years to understand our experience of slavery, and can retell its story in a way that helps us find new meaning in it, the challenge we are all experiencing now is new: we don’t know how we will tell its story, or what meaning we will find in it months or even years from now. As we live through this particular chapter, many of us are feeling a kind of discomfort -- deeper than our inability to hug our children, or see our friends, or order the food we want. This discomfort has a name: grief.

Adam LavittApril 4, 2020Coronavirus, Passover, grief

Shabbat Bo

After the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, they turned around to see the water closing on the advancing Egyptian armies. The angels, seeing all this, were about to break into song when God suddenly silenced them, declaring, “How dare you sing for joy when My creatures are suffering.” The angels’ silence reflected a moral and spiritual victory. A strength that enabled our ancestors to, in my grandfather’s words, “differentiate between transitory and relatively insignificant values and those which are truly fundamental.”

Adam LavittJanuary 31, 2020Passover, compassion

Shabbat Shemot

Our tradition acknowledges, there are times when there is a clear conflict between what is legal – the decrees of politicians and legislators; and what is just – the higher moral codes of our religious and ethical traditions. It is at times like these we are inspired by those who realized the only way to redeem the world was to challenge the status quo in the name of a higher authority.

Adam LavittJanuary 17, 2020Passover, Exodus, civil disobedience

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