Rabbi Naomi Levy
The only guest we CAN safely invite into our homes tonight is Elijah.
Elijah the Prophet is the one who will herald in the Messiah.
Our tradition offers us many visions of what Messianic Days will look like.
Some say it will be a time of supernatural events and miracles.
But the Haftorah we recite just before Passover describes the great gift Elijah will bring this way: “And he will restore the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents.”
Restoring Love is the greatest miracle of all, it is a Messianic dream.
Elijah comes to every bris and baby naming to teach us this same lesson – that every single soul has a sacred role to play in the healing of hearts across this world.
Let that healing begin tonight in my home:
Come Elijah, bless us our hearts with love and forgiveness.
Come Elijah, now more than ever we are aware of how precious life is
and how fragile.
Come Elijah, enter this home, enter every home and drink from your honored cup.
Redeem us Elijah, free us from resentments, heal us from anger,
Bring an end to all war and bloodshed.
Let a new time of healing begin tonight.
Welcome Elijah, pull up a chair.
We need you tonight more than ever
Come Now, Elijah,
Heal our world.
Amen.
Rabbi Yonah Berman
Dear Eliyahu,
I am writing to you because you play such an important part in our Seders, and I’m worried what you are going to say when you join us this year.
You may be confused or even upset as you visit our homes this Passover. Families seem to have forgotten to join together, and many are celebrating Seders all by themselves. You may, in fact, be the only guest many will share their Seders with, and all of us, you are likely to be the only non-immediate family member at the table.
Please do not worry. You see, our extraordinary community has taken superhuman steps this year to save lives by not joining together as we normally would. We are in the midst of a time when gathering together endangers ourselves and others, so we have chosen to celebrate the covenant with God differently than usual in order to save lives. God’s covenant with the Jewish People is based on life and we affirm that covenant this year by affirming our commitment to the preservation of life.
You have seen other Seders during difficult times in the past. You were there, during the Shoah, as our grandparents prayed that the Chametz they had to eat would allow them to live long enough to eat Matzah in the future. Remember?
This year brings us unique opportunities as we create new rituals and tell new stories that we will be able to share with others in the future, even as we remember those who have passed on, and miss those from whom we are physically distant.
But don’t worry. And maybe even be a little proud of us for how hard we are trying. We will still sing your song and so many other songs as we recount the Exodus story late into the night. And wherever we are, you will be with us: in hospital rooms and around emptier-than usual tables, your presence brings us hope and a closeness to God and to all Jews past, present and future.
It is our sincere hope that next year we will celebrate together with you in a rebuilt Jerusalem. But if not, we pray that our efforts now allow us to join together with our families and friends as we celebrate in good health, speedily in our days.
Love,
The Jewish People
Richard Hirsh, A Night of Questions
The First Passover was observed while our ancestors were still slaves. The focus of the first Pesach is the doorway, the boundary separates the circle of protection inside the Israelite dwellings from the destroying force that is ravaging Egypt. But unlike the night of the first Pesach, when to open the door was to invite disaster, we now confidently and deliberately throw open the door… send those who would have been most vulnerable – our children- to the spot where they would have been most exposed, namely, the doorway.
The Cup of Miriam, A Night of Questions
In the years of wandering in the desert, Miriam’s well accompanied the Israelites. According to tradition, Miriam’s well is still with us. While the return of Elijah is left to the future and all its potential, Miriam is present with us always. She is here to provide healing, inspiration and wisdom. There is still a long journey to freedom, a long while before Elijah can herald the messianic age. Miriam the prophet calls us to work for- not wait for- that day. She sustains us with the most basic substance on earth- water that cleanses and heals. Elijah’s cup remains untouched by us. But we now drink from Miriam’s cup, the nurturing waters of Miriam’s well.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin
Why must we open the door for Elijah the Prophet? Because, unless we open the door, Elijah will not come. There is a fundamental difference between the initial redemption and ultimate redemption. The initial redemption was brought by G-d alone- the 10 plagues, parting the Red Sea, fighting Pharaoh’s armies. We were still slaves and could not act on our own. But when G-d gave us the Torah, we took responsibility for ultimate redemption upon ourselves. It is we who now must act to bring Elijah. As the Kotzker Rebbe said, “Where is the place of G-d’s glory? Wherever one allows G-d in.” If we only open the door, redemption will come in our time.
Elie Wiesel
Please do not forget the prophet Elijah’s cup. Tradition holds that the greatest miracle maker among the Prophets visits all Jewish homes to drink from his own cup. Elijah is a friend and companion to all who need friendship and comfort. He is the mysterious stranger who arrives at precisely the right moment, to bring hope to those in despair.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
There are authorities who maintain we are obligated that we are drink not four, but five cups of wine at the Seder. This based on the fact that there are actually five “expressions of redemption” that are found in Scripture. As a sort of compromise between these two opinions, only four cups are drunk, but the fifth cup is filled. This fifth cup corresponds to the fifth expression of redemption (“And I shall bring you into the land”) and how fitting it is for this to be known as the cup of Elijah.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Missing Fifth
Beneath the surface of the Haggadah we find, not four fours, but five fives. In each case there is a missing fifth- a cup, an expression of deliverance, a verse, a question and a child. Each points to something incomplete in our present situation… Something is missing from our celebration- the first cup… That is a measure of what is still to be achieved. We have not yet reached our destination. The missing fifths remind us of work still to done.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
We open the door… it is a reminder of the Temple, the gates of which were opened exactly at midnight on Passover night to let the pilgrims enter or to be careful to see if any enemy is nearby conspiring outside the house. On Passover night, we do not lock our doors- for it is a “night of watching”, in which we all are protected from all harm and another explanation is to demonstrate our strong belief that redemption is coming.
JPS Haggadah
It is customary to open the door… The earlier custom seems to have been to leave the doors open throughout the evening. Deteriorating security cased people to limit opening their doors to short spans of time while reading the verse.
Zion, A Night to Remember
We open the door twice on Seder night. Once at “Ha Lachma Anya” we opened the door to our past, slavery and poverty and we invited the needy to join us. Now we open the door to the future, our tomorrow. So, we invite Elijah, the prophet of hope and happy endings.
[הנה אנכי שלח לכם את אליה הנביא לפני בוא יום ה' הגדול והנורא]
Martin Buber- “We can be redeemed only to the extent to which we see ourselves.”
Erica Brown, Seder Talk
Redemption is not only possibility. It is also about patience, the emotional fortitude required to wait for the small, interconnecting pieces of a story to come together. Patience demands the capacity to tolerate delay, to accept trouble, and often suffering, without anger or retaliation. But waiting is hard work. It can exhaust our patience and fill us with doubts and uncertainty. People get tired of waiting… Redemption always reflects the dialectic tension of pushing and patience. There have always been two schools regarding the Messiah’s arrival. There are those who choose to wait patiently and check for signs, and there are those who wait proactively and try to create the kind of reality that believe will bring the Messiah (like the division of Chasidim and religious Zionists). The story of waiting is not always one of anticipation alone- it is one of enduring power. To wait is to exhibit a blend of strength and realism wrapped in a veil of optimism that has served the Jewish people admirably throughout history.
The Talmud records an intriguing conversation that R. Yehoshua ben Levi had with Elijah, the prophet who is assigned to introduce, welcome, or be the harbinger of the Messiah.
The messiah is sitting in Rome, the capital city of an empire that controlled the Jews, an enemy, taking care of the most needy outcasts of society who cannot take care of themselves. The lepers are removing their bandages while the Messiah is seeing each one of them personally and binding and healing them. He must do his work efficiently because he could get called at any moment to a larger task of redemption. But he knows that the way to prepare himself to save the world is through engaging in small acts of kindness and compassion for those who need it the most. We wait for the Messiah and the Messiah waits for us.
Passover guides us through the ethical imperative to move forward and advance instead of shrinking back into a trapped, flat existence where we cannot exert our freedoms. It tells us that we cannot stop hoping for an improved world and acting to bring about change. It reminds us that redemption is about waiting patiently and then moving quickly when the moment arrives.
Sue Levi Elwell, The Open Door Haggadah
On this night, we pray that in days to come, Our children will remember to tell their children, freedom is G-d’s gift- and our obligation.
On this night, we welcome the prophet Elijah and speak of ancient promise. On this night, we reclaim a tradition of dreams. On this night, we open wide the door of hope.
Michael Walzer, Exodus & Revolution
The Door of Hope is still Open
The “Door of Hope” is still; things are not what they might be- even when what they might be isn’t totally different from what they were. We still believe, many of us do, what the Exodus first taught: that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt- and that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land- and that the way to the land is through the wilderness. There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.
Noam Zion, A Different Night
The Hassidic Rebbe Naftali Tzvi Horowitz used to invite all the participants of the seder to pour from their personal cup into Elijah’s cup. This symbolizes the need for everyone to make their own personal contribution to awaked the divine forces of redemption by beginning with human efforts. In some families, each participant expresses a particular wish for a better year as they pour their own wine to fill Elijah’s cup.