The Days after Pesach

The Days after Pesach are a combination of coming down and counting up!

The wonderful anticipation of something great about to happen. The Pesach seder; a reliving of the moment of our freedom.

When I was a little girl, I used to cry about the fact that I was a slave in Mitzrayim, Egypt; toiling under the whip to build Pithom and Ramses. Little babies used as mortar between the stones. Wicked taskmasters getting their jollies torturing my people. And then we witness the makkos, the plagues to which all the Jews were only spectators. And then we take the Egyptian god and slaughter it under the noses of our Egyptian neighbors. I think at that moment we were truly free.

This is all very true and at the same time, quite esoteric. But wait! There's more! We are set free and we left with untold riches and we waltz through the Yam Suf, the Sea of Reeds, dry shod, while our oppressors in hot pursuit " scream, "I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide plunder, I will unsheathe my sword, my hands will impoverish them." (Does this ring a bell? Think current events.) "Then the Alm-ghty blew with his wind and the sea enshrouded them. The mighty ones sank like lead in the waters." With all the Egyptians dead on the seashore, Moshe Rabbeinu leads us to Har Sinai to get the most valuable treasure of all, the Torah.

But in order to get the Torah, we must count up 1, 2, 3, ...to 49 and reverse the 49 levels of impurity that was our station, the lowest station possible, before we would be irredeemable (no, the Jews are not coupons)

What a ride!!! And we're not finished yet!

As a matter of fact a Jew is never finished. That is the beauty of being Jewish.