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Community Corner

Heard of Passover?

Passover. What’s it to you? Pass…over…Sounds like, ‘Hey there, do you want to play PassOver?’

It was on that night that G-d passed over the homes of the Jews, to save them from the plague of the firstborns, and heralded the end of the Jewish slavery in Ancient Egypt. But the question begs, why did G-d choose the action of Passing over? Of leaping above?

Let me throw out a thought. We’ve all been in that place of gloom and glum. Where nothing is working out. Where it seems that everything that can go wrong, is. Or at least, mostly. Or just stuck in the rut of regular life, bored and under-stimulated. A bit claustrophobic.

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We’re on ground level.

We’re looking at the skyscraper from street-view.

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It’s at that moment that we’ve got to take stock and say: “I may be on ground level, but there is a much bigger picture happening, and the bird’s eye view is a completely different vantage point.” We can lift ourselves higher than the circumstance that we’re in, and leap into ‘PassOver’ mode.

This is the essence of this Jewish springtime holiday. We mark the time that G-d liberated the Jewish slaves from Egyptian bondage. There’s freedom hangin’ in the air, just waiting for us to tap into its energy and implement it in our own lives.

Pasover is the time to ask ourselves those questions that we’ve perhaps been avoiding. What is holding me captive? Is it my habits? Is it my past behavior? Is it my perception? Is it my expectations? And of course, to address the answers to our self-interview.

A young, university student came to the Lubavitcher Rebbe for a private audience. The Rebbe asked him, “What are you doing for the Jewish students in Cambridge?”

A little abashed to confess that he hadn’t given much thought to Judaism in Cambridge, the student haltingly tried an excuse, “Well, with the situation that I find myself in….”

To which the Rebbe interjected, “We don’t find ourselves in situations, we create them.”

The student was Former Chief Rabbi of England, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

Anyone for a game of PassOver?

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