Dear Friend,
As we approach the last days of Passover, the holiday concludes with the Feast of Moshiach.
Moshiach’s feast is intended to deepen our awareness of Moshiach and enable us to integrate it into our daily thinking processes. The twelfth article of Rambam’s thirteen principles of faith is “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of Moshiach. Even if he delays, I will wait every day for him to come.”
Though all believing Jews accept this principle intellectually, for many the concept of Moshiach remains abstract. Partaking of Moshiach’s feast reinforces our belief in this principle, translating our awareness of Moshiach into a meal, a physical experience which leads us to associate this concept with our flesh and blood.
The Baal Shem Tov’s linking of our awareness of Moshiach to the physical is significant, because it prepares us for the revelations of the era of redemption. In that era, the G‑dliness that is enclothed within the physical world will be overtly manifest. As the prophet Isaiah declared, “The glory of G‑d will be revealed, and all flesh will see it together.” At that time, “the glory of G‑d” will permeate even the physical aspects of the world—“all flesh.”
Chassidic teachings explain that the preparations for a revelation must foreshadow the revelation itself. Since, in the era of the redemption, the revelation of G‑dliness will find expression even in the physical world, it is fitting that our preparation for these revelations be associated with physical activities such as eating and drinking.
You may join us at synagogue or enjoy this feast home. See schedule below.
With wishes for a continued healthy and joyful Passover, may we merit to welcome Moshiach now!
Shabbos and Holiday Times
Friday, April 2, 2021
Candle Lighting: 7:05pm Evening service: 7:05pm
Saturday, April 3, 2021
Morning service: 10:00am Evening service: 7:05pm
Candle Lighting from pre-existing flame after: 8:05pm
Sunday, April 4, 2021
Morning Service: 10:00am
Yizkor: 11:15am
Feast of Moshiach: 6:30pm Passover ends 8:06pm,
Discussing life in the light of Chabad Philosophy
On Zoom:
Meeting ID: 895 6598 0718
Passcode: tanya
Presented in English by Rabbi Mendel Zaltzman
MVP Mitzvah Volunteer Program
Thursdays 4-5pm
For boys and girls in Grades 6th- 8th
At each weekly program MVP's will prepare special personalized packages for seniors that will be delivered safely in time for Shabbat.
Join the weekly meetings at the Bris Avrohom of Fair Lawn location, to prepare and personalize the packages and have some treats and fun while we work.
A BISSELE HUMOR
Tuesdays are when Sarah and Rachel get together for coffee. Often times the topic of conversation revolves around their children.
“Have you heard from your David in college?” Rachel asks.
“Oy, my son David is so brilliant,” Sarah says proudly, “that every time he writes us we have to go to the dictionary."
"You're lucky," Rachel replies. "Every time we get a letter from ours, we have to go to the bank!
WEEKLY eTORAH
In every generation," say our sages, "a person is obligated to see himself as if he himself has come out of Egypt."
Mitzrayim, the Hebrew word for "Egypt," means "boundaries" and "constrictions"; yetziat mitzrayim, "going out of Egypt," is the endeavor to rise above all that inhibits the soul of man, be it limitations imposed by an outside force, or the physical, psychological or spiritual limitations imposed by habit and nature.
One of the most constricting elements of the human condition is the phenomenon of time. Time carries off the past and holds off the future, confining our lives to a temporal sliver of "present." But on the first night of Passover we break the bonds of time, having received a mandate to experience the Exodus "as if he himself has come out of Egypt." We recall the Exodus in our minds, verbalize it in the telling of the Haggadah, digest it in the form of matzah and wine. As we passover the centuries, memory — those faded visages of past that generally constitute our only answer to the tyranny of time — becomes experience, and history is made current and real.
Passover is an eight-day festival, with two opening and two closing days of heightened observance and commemoration (Yom Tov). While the theme of redemption runs as a current through the entire festival, the first days of Passover focus primarily on our first redemption — our liberation from Egypt thirty-three centuries ago—while the closing days highlight the final redemption — the future era of divine goodness and perfection heralded by Moshiach.
On the first two nights of Passover we conduct the Seder, reliving our redemption from Egypt in the telling of the Haggadah, the eating of the matzah and the bitter herbs, and the drinking of the four cups of wine. On the seventh day of Passover, we read the "Song at the Sea," which contains an important allusion to the Messianic era; on the eighth day, the haftarah (reading from the Prophets) is from Isaiah 10:32-12:6--one of the primary prophecies on the future Redemption. Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Chassidic movement, instituted the custom of partaking of "Moshiach's Feast"--a mirror seder of sorts that includes matzah and four cups of wine—on the afternoon of the eighth day of Passover.
Thus on the latter days of Passover, our transcendence of time enters a new, heightened phase: it is one thing to vitalize memory to the point of actual re-experience, but quite another to make real an event that lies in the future, especially an event that has no parallel in the history of man. Yet in the closing hours of Passover, we enter into the world of Moshiach. Having vaulted over millennia of past on the seder nights, we now surmount the blank wall of future, to taste the matzah and wine of the ultimate redemption.
