Passover is my favorite holiday. It's the gathering of family and friends, long tables filled with laughter and conversation, and juxtaposed themes of oppression and liberation, bitterness and sweetness. These deeply symbolic rituals hold powerful lessons.
This year, amidst the upheaval in the world, I'm taking time to sit with bitterness and fully engage its presence.
We don't just experience these themes symbolically; we live them. We feel them viscerally; through the seder's foods and actions we perform. The
charoset
's sweet kiss contrasts with the bite of the
maror
(bitter herbs), which represents the bitterness of slavery.
We taste that bitterness not just to remember, but to truly engage with the sorrow of those who came before us. At seder after seder, we experience this bitterness. And, year after year, we are asked to sit with it.
In a world that encourages us to move quickly through pain and grief, the seder urges us to do the opposite: to pause, to dwell in the bitterness, and to acknowledge the suffering that has shaped our people's history. We cannot simply gloss over the hard parts of our past or present. To move forward, we must first understand the depth of the struggles that came before us. Pain and loss are not things to avoid, but to face.
Michael Rosen says it best in his children's book,
We're Going on a Bear Hunt
: "We can't go over it. We can't go under it. Oh no! We've got to go through it!" This lesson resonates deeply during the Seder. The bitterness and tears are things we must go through. We cannot skip it, nor can we rush it. We must sit with it, live with it, and remember it. The real work happens not in avoiding discomfort, but in engaging it.
The bitterness of the
maror
isn't just about remembering history. It's about confronting the grief in our own lives. Many of us tend to rush through our own pain, and to get to the sweetness too quickly. Passover teaches us that we need to give space to grief, and not rush a resolution. The bitterness of the
maror
forces us to sit with the weight of suffering, and reflect on how it shapes us.
In my work as a grief specialist, I accompany people through grief, illness, and pain. I don't have the power to solve their struggles or take away their hurt. My role is not to fix, but to be present. I walk with them through difficult moments, not with quick solutions, but with the understanding that, sometimes, the only thing that can be done is to sit with the pain and dwell in it, for as long as necessary.
Yet, the seder is not only about the bitterness; it's also about the sweetness.
Charoset
, with its rich flavors, offers us balance. While it's important to experience the sweetness, we cannot spend all our time there. The sweetness reminds us that joy exists, but it doesn't negate the need to sit with the bitterness. The combination of the contrasting
maror
and
charoset
shows us that we can hold both sorrow and joy together.
We must engage with our pain, but we are also capable of healing… and finding sweetness along the way.
Leah Shefsky is the chaplaincy coordinator and grief specialist at JCFS Chicago.
