 As you are reading this, you've already experienced your family Seder. Yontif has yielded to chol hamo-ed, the interim days of Pesach.
For most people, of course, the Seder is, as it is supposed to be, the highlight of the holiday: family gathered around the table, great food, good company, singing, laughing, just enough wine to make you a little giddy.
But Pesach is a great deal more than the Seder. The remaining days may not be yontif the way the first and last days are, but they stand on their own. Unlike yontif where one is supposed to not go to work, they are by definition just ordinary days. The daily worship service is virtually unaffected; one goes to work (except on Shabbat, of course); there's no special ceremony. The interim days' character is changed really by changing one part of our behavior, our diet; we refrain from eating foods with chametz, leavening. All else remains pretty much the same.
I've always thought that the true message of Pesach comes on these days. It's only if the message of Pesach infiltrates our everyday ordinary lives that our observance has real meaning. It's as though we're saying, "I heard the message of the special ceremony at Seder; now that my life returns to the everyday tasks of living, I live the message."
Remember what food really represents. The old line, "You are what you eat" never rang truer than during Pesach. That indeed is the precise message of what we refrain from eating. It's as though we're saying, "There are certain forms of behavior that I will refrain from doing. I need special ceremony to remind me, but then the message of the ceremony continues unceremoniously in my everyday behavior."
And then when Pesach ends and we return to our normal diet, we don't even need the special foods to remind us. The values of our holiday become reinfused in our lives. They may have languished before the holiday, but now they are reinvigorated.
After all is said and done, isn't that the real intent of every holiday on the calendar - from Shabbat which occurs weekly to the ones that occur annually - to remind us how we're supposed to live the ordinary days of our lives, when there's no special ceremony; we're just living.
I hope you will allow the next few days of your Pesach observance to do that for you: remind you to value the freedom you have every day and do those things that enhance the freedom and welfare of others as well.
Mo-adim l'simcha - Happy Pesach.
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