Festival of Freedom: Essays on Pesah and the Haggadah

Synopsis

From the book: For Rabbi Soloveitchik, the Passover Seder is not simply a formal ritual or ceremonial catechism. Rather, the Seder night is "endowed with a unique and fascinating quality, exalted in [its] holiness and shining with a dazzling beauty." It possesses profound experiential and intellectual dimensions, both of them woven into the fabric of halakhic performance. Its central mitzvah, sippur yetzi'at Mitzrayim, recounting the exodus, is extraordinarily multifaceted, entailing study and teaching, storytelling and symbolic performance, thanksgiving and praise. In these essays on major themes associated with Passover, the Rav explains how the resonances of the Seder extend far beyond the confines of one night. As he sets forth, the Seder teaches us about the Jewish approach to the meal, Torah study, peoplehood, and the nature of freedom. Yetzi'at Mitzrayim is not just the story of an event lying in the distant past. It is the doctrine of the Jewish people, the philosophy of our history. It is the Jewish people's outlook on the world; and to that, the Haggadah says, the entire process of intellectual understanding can be applied. As the Rav explained in one of his many discourses on the Haggadah, the hakham, the creative genius, can behold things that are invisible to others; the navon, the systematizer, can develop and organize a philosophy of Jewish fate and destiny; and the yode'a et ha-Torah, the master of practical application, can apply it to present problems, to our acute situations, to the events of the day.

Copyright:

2006

Book Details

Book Quality:

Excellent

Book Size:

2 Pages

Publisher:

N/A

Date of Addition:

05/07/07

Copyrighted By:

Toms Horav Foundation

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Religion and Spirituality

Submitted By:

Adrienne Asch

Proofread By:

Lena

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.