Tag Archives: Passover

L’Eau and Behold

Posted on April 29, 2024 by jillbpearlman

One of Passover’s big themes is water.  The Sea in the Desert sets the stage for crossing the sea, coming through narrow straits, through a “birth canal” towards your own life, passing from received ideas towards self-awareness and freedom, singing in … Continue reading →

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In Our Cups of Seder Freedom

Posted on April 9, 2023 by jillbpearlman

Four glasses in, heaps of food and words, the feast of mouth-people overflows. The Reed Sea breathes. The message in the bottle passed forward each year — Ask, talk!  Tell, tell! — God’s backward order that Exodus was a pretextfor us to tell the … Continue reading →

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Eternal Memories in the Eternal City

Posted on April 4, 2021 by jillbpearlman

Eternal memories from the Eternal City, Rome, 2018, from the weeks we were lucky enough to spend in Testaccio. That year, religious holidays fell at the same time — Passover Seder was finishing as Easter bells began to ring.   In … Continue reading →

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Speak, Kafka: What the Maxwell House Haggadah didn’t share

Posted on March 26, 2021 by jillbpearlman

The Jewish way of telling things is famously contentious and fractured; stories get started, then start again differently (doesn’t an Origin story imply a single origin? Think again!)  The surface is not linear, stories grab you, then leave a key part … Continue reading →

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A Sonnet for Seder during Lockdown

Posted on April 8, 2020 by jillbpearlman

Sonnet for Seder during Lockdown Nothing is new under the sun, not even confinement.  The sun is not new, narrow straits not new, the liberation story rolls like time in search of an ending.  With Passover we should be done but we keep … Continue reading →

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Passover, Notre-Dame and the Book Thing

Posted on April 19, 2019 by jillbpearlman

The idea that Notre-Dame might be reduced to a hole in the ground, a collection of rubble terrified me.  When I lived in Paris, or before that, or after, the Cathedral lodged itself deeply in my being. A friend mentioned … Continue reading →

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Headiness of Spring Cleaning

Posted on April 14, 2019 by jillbpearlman

I had a highly complicated scaffolded reaction to a spring cleaning talk that I’m attempting to unravel.  It led to a revelation, and that I’ll try to unravel too.  It took place in a series of metaphors – which made … Continue reading →

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Debating Seder – for Mireille Knoll

Posted on March 30, 2018 by jillbpearlman

What is Seder? A time to leave doors open like Mireille Knoll, late of Paris: “If she could have she would have welcomed the entire world into her home” entertain anyone who has a mother though she survived the Nazis, … Continue reading →

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The Perfect Egg

Posted on April 9, 2015 by jillbpearlman

What makes the egg so perfect? What makes it possible to even use that word, in such imperfect times? Could it be Spring itself that elevates anything which encompasses shape, symbol and sustenance in a single entity? Bring it on, … Continue reading →

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Swing it, Miriam

Posted on April 3, 2015 by jillbpearlman

I am imagining a little skit of two Jewish women kvetching at Passover.  They talk about how nothing changes: the degradation in Egypt, known as Mizraim, is not the distant past, but same old, same old: “Mizraim, Mizraim? We’re always … Continue reading →

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