Matzah and Wine

Passover 5784 - 2024

First Night of Passover, Monday night April 22, 5784- 2024

In person, indoors, in good health and spirit - G‑d willing!

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR SEDER
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Contact to see if space)

FOR SALE OF CHAMETZ CLICK  HERE  

On the first night of Passover join us for a warm and enlightening Passover seder, gourmet Passover meal, and uplifting spirits and insights, and great friendship.

Family seating and atmosphere. First course-appetizers at beginning. The rest is served as the Seder progresses.

6:45 PM

Limited space. $60 adult, $30 child under 12. 

Or contact us to pay what you can!

 No one turned away due to lack or concern of funds.

Please consider sponsoring a family, or helping to sponsor the event, here.

Please RSVP by April 14 - Contact us to check if space after that

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Call 264-6930 or email here for questions.

To explore the possibility of joining a full traditional family-style second night seder - beginning on Tuesday after 8:30 pm and finishing late - please contact us directly.

Boy with Matzah

For a treasure trove of ideas, important information, Passover guidance and fun click on www.jewishrsm.com/passover.

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FOR SALE OF CHAMETZ CLICK HERE

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PLEASE NOTE: A SEDER CAN BE DONE EASILY AT YOUR OWN HOME! PLEASE DON'T MISS OUT. 

“Why is this night different from all other Passover nights?”  Different shouldn’t mean disregarded! Advance planning and effort can help that. More opportunity to do it on the right night, after dark on April 22 and 23! It can be shorter, easier, but much more impactful.

Advance planning and effort can help your seder, whether you are able to be with family or not. After dark on April 22 and 23! It can be shorter, easier, but much more impactful.

Some PSA: The main part of the seder is only three food items! (although some dinner should be eaten at that part of the seder). Matzah, kosher wine or grape-juice (TJ's or Total Wine or huge selection at the OC Kosher market), and marror (cleaned romaine lettuce). That's it! If you have some hagada you're set!

Make sure the matzah you buy says "Kosher for Passover"! Believe it or not, most year-round matzah is not kosher for passover and the stores don’t always know to differentiate.

Full Seder meals for two or more can be ordered at OC Kosher Market  at https://www.ockosher.com/index.php/holidays by March 21 latest. See their website for details.

Sale of Chametz: A main central part of Passover is to not eat or even own any Chametz.  This can be taken care of by  SALE OF CHAMETZ. CLICK HERE to take care of it.

 FULL Pesach resources - Sell your Chametz, download a Hagaddah, learn step-by-step seder instructions, order matzah or learn more about everything Passover right at jewishrsm.com/passover

2) For more information on doing a full seder, click here -  

 

Passover Articles

South County OC Register 5774-2014 

Go Jump... It’s Passover!

Passover is here again and since last year I’ve made a new discovery: not only do many young people not know the story of the exodus from the Torah, they don’t even know it from Hollywood. (How old were they when the Prince of Egypt came out?) Not that the latter is wholly a bad problem—it leaves less misconceptions to undo— but it does create a different challenge: Where do you start?

The basic story is easy enough: The Israelites are enslaved by Pharaoh in Egypt. G‑d sends Moses, who brings the ten plagues, and leads them out to freedom. In their haste, they bake the dough before it has time to rise. It becomes matzah. The Israelites travel through desert and sea, and receive the Torah at Sinai. A celebration is divinely ordained for all generations: Remove and avoid all leavened food for eight days. Make the first and last days holy days of rest. On the first nights after dark—this year on the nights of April 14 and 15—eat matzah and bitter herbs. Tell and discuss the story. Include four cups of wine, good food, heaps of laughter, family, spirit and song.

There’s more to it, but that’s a good beginning. The online resource below is a great place to follow up. But there’s another question that’s no less important: Where do you end? 

Truth is, you don’t. The story is ongoing, and is as relevant today as ever. How?

Here’s one idea: After the final plague, Pharaoh was reduced to a chicken-livered weakling. Why, then, did the Israelites have to rush so and sneak out like thieves? Actually, they didn’t. They marched out in broad daylight, at midday. Yet it says that they had no time to wait for the dough to rise?! And already from the night before, at the first seder, they were already dressed for the road, loins girded and staffs in hand, ready to travel in an instant?

Also, why choose the name Passover (Pesach in Hebrew), which refers only to a side detail in the last plague, how G‑d passed (sprang) over the Israelite’s homes saving their firstborns from death. Surely there are more central themes. Why not call it Festival of Freedom, as indeed we do in the holiday liturgy?

One answer is that when you’re sinking in the quicksand you don’t wait. You run. You jump. You use all your power and energy to get yourself free and unstuck. You even find a strength that you never knew you had, to get out before it’s too late. On a spiritual level, the Israelites at that time had so descended into the pagan, immoral culture that surrounded them that they were in danger of being swallowed up and disappearing forever. Pharaoh aside, they needed out. G‑d passed over—literally leaped—and so did they.

And that’s the key to redemption. When you’re in a rut, in a repressive negative cycle, or even just stricken by stagnation, reach into your inner core and jump. Go beyond yourself. Make a change in your lifestyle. Because as humans created in the image of G‑d we have the infinite capacity to grow.

For additional holiday inspiration, insight, guidance and fun go to www.passover.net or www.jewishrsm.com/passover, where you can also find communal seders across the county.

South County OC Register 5773-2013

Passover: On Humility, Freedom and Tradition

 

Passover: What’s it about?

As chirping frogs herald the advent of spring and newspapers tell of swarms of locusts descending upon the Middle East, you know that Passover is in the offing. Passover is the biblical holiday that celebrates the exodus of the Jewish people from Ancient Egypt and their miraculous deliverance from slavery under the Pharaoh and his bloodthirsty cohorts in the year 2448 from creation (1313 BCE).

 

This year Passover arrives on Monday evening, March 25. Observances include a variety of elements: There’s the traditional seder that includes matzah, bitter herbs, four cups of wine, reliving the story through the reading of the Haggadah-liturgy, a festive meal, the asking of the four questions, and so much more. Many a pleasant childhood memory has been created from this warm, spiritual, family-oriented tradition.

 

Preceding the holiday comes a spring-cleaning of sorts to remove from our homes even the slightest speck of chametz (leavened-grain from wheat and barley and the like, such as that found in bread, pasta, pretzels, or things like beer or vodka etc.).

 

And for eight and a half days, beginning mid-morning on Monday until nightfall on Tuesday April 2, we avoid chametz and its derivatives like the plague. For an amazing online Passover resource, with sections for all ages, go to www.passover.net or www.chabad.org/holidays.

 

Matzah Messages

Although Passover is strictly a Jewish holiday, it carries some timeless and universal messages. Take matzah, for example. It commemorates the haste in which the Jewish people left Egypt—they had to bake quick provisions but there was no time for the dough to rise—and the extraordinary faith they displayed by following the G‑d-sent Moses into the desert, all without a survival plan.

 

Matzah—flat, crunchy, and unleavened—also represents humility and selflessness. It takes humility to believe, it takes humility to learn, it takes humility to think of others, and it takes humility to truly grow. Humility allows us to recognize when we louse up, and encourages us to improve rather than remain stuck in the dark, unready to admit fault or failure.

 

In other words, matzah provides an escape hatch. Fascinatingly, this is signified by one minor detail in the one Hebrew letter that differentiates the word from its undesired leavened counterpart. The hey in matzah, unlike the chet in chametz, leaves a small opening between the leg and the roof of the doorway-shaped letter that both words share.

 

Self-Esteem

Chametz is typically dough that has been allowed to rise and grow puffy—representing selfishness, arrogance and bloated self-awareness. These natural human vices have existed since time immemorial, but perhaps a refresher can be useful in our modern era, where the lines between self-esteem and self-absorbedness have often blurred.

 

With its eight-day focus on humility, Passover helps provide clarity and demarcation. Self-esteem is laudable when it contributes to a healthy foundation. This includes treating oneself with self-respect; not having unwarranted insecurity or an inferiority complex; having the confidence and courage to try new things and stand up for what’s right; and to recognize one’s infinite value as a human-being created by G‑d. When it develops an appetite for vanity and personal gain, the self-esteem “miracle-staff” begins to turn serpentile.

 

A balanced self-esteem hails from selflessness and humility—which should not be confused with timidity or weakness. It takes profound humility to serve, and significant selflessness to recognize that you are here for a purpose other than self-perpetuation: namely, to make the world a kinder, better, more moral and divine place.

 

Moses was called “the most humble of people upon the face of the earth,” yet he stood up fearlessly to the Pharaoh, spoke and even argued with G‑d, and led his people with love, compassion, and—when necessary—a firm hand. He was not self-indulgent but self-abnegating; he was not self-centered, but self-effacing; and he was also not self-conscious, but self-assured. Perhaps this is what allowed him the true freedom to soar.

 

Freedom

Much more can be said on the topic of humility, and about freedom, too (Passover being called the Holiday of our Freedom). It boils down to this: the price for freedom is the readiness to sacrifice certain conveniences for the sake of something larger and better. A caring and responsible parent knows that raising a child with completely unfettered boundaries will more likely produce a wild beast than a kind, productive, upstanding person.

 

A budding pianist knows that slave-like attention to repetition, technique, and practice is what produces the most freeing thrill of beautiful music. The examples abound, but the central point is that doing what you want, whenever you want, and however you want, does not necessarily equal true liberty—ask anyone recovering from the pestilence of addiction. “Let my people go,” the call that has spawned many a freedom movement, is only the first half of the phrase. The pivotal ending to that phrase is, “so that they may serve Me.”

 

Timing

Passover “service” goes beyond matzah-balls and brisket. Like our pianist, there is a songbook with notes to follow, the Haggadah, with guidelines on how to achieve the best results. There is the concert date and start time, when the spiritual divine Passover energy reigns. Tevye chalked it up to tradition, and traditions certainly die hard. But the details do have rhyme and reason too.

 

If you are making a seder this year let me suggest that you try and incorporate at least one key upgrade, particularly regarding timing. If you typically start your seder before dark, at least try and keep some of the crucial components going until after dark, when the gates of Heaven are open. If you were planning the main family seder get-together for another night, at least eat some matzah on Monday (and Tuesday) night. Same if you weren’t planning a seder at all. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

 

Because having a higher purpose to life; an objective guide to what is good, moral, and compassionate; and the humility and discipline and passion to do the best with the blessings we have been endowed, is the most freeing thing on earth.

 

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Did you find hints to the famous ten plagues hidden throughout this article? If not, time for a re-read.

Rabbi Zalman A. Kantor directs (together with his wife Rochel) the Chabad Jewish Center of Rancho S. Margarita, one of 17Chabad branches servicing local communities in Orange County. He can be reached for comment at info@ jewishrsm.com.

ATTENTION: REGISTRATION REACHING CAPACITY. CALL 264-6930 OR EMAIL [email protected] TO CHECK IF THERE IS SPACE (REGISTRATION FORM IS ACTIVE BUT CARD WILL NOT BE CHARGED UNTIL CONFIRMATION ).