I am publishing this week’s post over 20 hours early (assuming I can finish writing it by then), because, of course, Pesach begins this evening. For the same reason, this is going to be a fairly short post. Bernice and I are actually well on schedule with all of the practical preparations for hag. However, Pesach, and Seder night specifically, are not only about practical preparations. If Judaism is a religion that inhabits the space shared by ritual and theology, then Pesach is the festival that, perhaps more than any other, belongs to that space.

Sukkot is, I would argue, the only other genuine contender for that title, and, even then, nobody starts preparing for Sukkot until after Yom Kippur, a few days previously. Many people start preparing for Pesach immediately after Purim – a month in advance (and some after Chanukah – over three months in advance in a non-leap lunar year).

So, in terms of physical preparations, we are in good shape. As I write these lines, Bernice is preparing this evening’s meal. Yesterday, I did my ritual biscuit and cake bake. This year went very smoothly, after an initial hiccough. I began by gathering my ingredients for the three-and-a-half-hour bakeathon – French chocolate cake, coconut pyramids, florentines, almond macaroons, cinnamon balls, all executed in accordance with a songsheet that has been refined over the years to best utilise baking time for preparation of the next item, while taking into account the limited number of baking trays at my disposal, the fact that we have only one cooling tray, varying oven temperature times, calls for egg yolks and whites, and so forth.

The initial hiccough was when I discovered that during our big pre-Pesach shop, we had somehow missed the sugar on our list. A word of advice. If you’re going to forget one item from your pre-Pesach baking shopping expedition, don’t make it sugar, which is, of course, common to all of the above goodies. So I had to dash out to buy some sugar last minute. However, as I say, from then on things went smoothly, and I was able to relinquish the kitchen to Bernice in good time.

This leaves me free, today, to devote myself to the spiritual preparation, which takes the form, for me, of deciding what we should speak about during the Seder. At the risk of almost repeating myself, and appearing to contradict myself, if Judaism is a religion that inhabits the space shared by liturgy and free expression, then Pesach is the festival that, perhaps more than any other, occupies that space. The essence of the Seder is not only to read the Haggadah, but also to have the text of the Haggadah serve as a springboard for exploring our faith.

This year, more than any year in my lifetime, and certainly in a way that we have not seen since the 1970s and the Movement for Soviet Jewry, it seems impossible simply to read the Pesach story this evening. The situation in which both Israel and world Jewry find themselves, the fact that well over a hundred thousand Israelis are not able to celebrate in their homes near the northern border or near Gaza, the hundreds and hundreds of families grieving for their loved ones who were murdered on October 7 or who have fallen in the war, and most powerfully the continued incarceration and enslavement of those abductees that are still alive, and the holding of the bodies of those that are not, cries out for us to explore, in the Pesach story, ways to understand where what we are living through fits into the Jewish story, and how we can live with it.

I don’t want to say more than that, because Bernice might read these words before Seder night, and I want to avoid any spoilers.

Instead, let me offer a couple of quick observations about life in Israel as viewed through the radio. (Yes, I know you can’t view anything through the radio. “…as discerned through the radio”, if you insist, but it doesn’t have the same ring.)

As the days have ticked on (199 days from Simchat Torah; 1 day to Pesach), with October 7 not getting smaller in the rearview mirror and Pesach looming ever larger through the windscreen, the conversation in Israel has turned increasingly to the two questions I pose in my title this week. How can we celebrate the Festival of Freedom when 133 hostages are either dead or alive and still underground in darkness in Gaza? How can we wish each other a Joyous Pesach when the reality is so depressing? I believe that there are answers to these questions, and I believe that the Seder table is the place to discuss them, but I also believe that the questions are not only legitimate but also are begging to be asked.

Oh dear! That last paragraph looks remarkably like a spoiler to me. Let me back-pedal. The clash between celebration and the suspension of celebration has been very noticeable this week on my usual radio station. The bulk of the content of the morning current affairs programs has been focused, in recent days, on these questions. The presenters have explored possible answers with the families of the abducted, whose empty chair at this year’s Seder, barring a miracle of Biblical proportions, will be real and not symbolic. They have also explored them with religious leaders and thinkers.

These morning programs are sprinkled (which may be how the network sees it) or rudely interrupted (which is how I see it) by upbeat advertisements and promos for the network’s upcoming television programs. The sombre, often heart-wrenching, nature of the discussions is thus interrupted by a jarring promo, publicising a cooking competition or a sitcom. The dissonance is painful, and leaves me feeling that the network simply doesn’t take its own programming seriously.

Let me leave you this week with one of those ‘only in Israel’ moments: a public service announcement that has been aired repeatedly this week. This week is, paradoxically, the single time in the year when more Israelis travel abroad than at any other time, celebrating the Exodus from Egypt with an exodus from Israel). The announcement offers advice to those planning to fly from Ben Gurion airport: arrive three hours before your flight; check in online beforehand; if you have only carry-on luggage, go straight to the check-in desk. The announcement then ends with one more item, from airport security: make sure you haven’t left any live ammunition in your luggage.

When I realised that that didn’t sound strange to me, I knew I had reached a new level of acclimation to life in Israel. Wherever you are, and whenever you read this, may I wish you and all of yours a Joyous and Healthy Festival of Freedom. (Spoiler alert: Joyous even if not Happy; Freedom even if not Liberty.)