4.12.2006 | The most important thing?

It's infrequent, but this year Holy Week and the Jewish Passover coincide, with tonight marking the first day, at sundown, of the eight-day celebration. I write "Jewish Passover" since Christians also should know that it is very much also their Passover.

God demonstrated His power by freeing the Israelites, and then, 50 days later (hmmm, another pentecost...) giving them His Torah. We are now the Israelites, and we have inherited Torah for our Messianic Age -- with new revelations of course.

In the United States, many Jews, likely even a majority of those born Jewish do not celebrate their religious heritage. Or know very much about it. In attempting to correct this, some Jewish organizations have engaged in outreach for unlearned and unafiliated Jews: the Creative Seder Initiative (CSI).

This outreach, which is unusual for Jews given our history of persecution and resulting isolation, was written about in today's Washington Post, and, as is usual for the hyper-secular Post, it tread the line between being informative and being patronizing.

One quote stood out:

They want a Seder but don't know how," said Shlomo Perelman, an Orthodox Jew who worries but also operates two large Web sites that sell the trendy items. "But the most important thing is that someone goes to a Seder."

Well, I may not be the best Jew, being a Baptist, but I'd prefer to think that Mr. Perelman has it wrong. He has confused cause and effect. Or, better, the Cause and His effect.

The most important thing can not be any liturgy or ceremony. Regardless of its beauty or Biblical significance. The most important thing, the Alpha, must be faith in God. Absent faith in God, the seder becomes just another meal, if one with a lot of puzzling aspects.

With faith, and the Torah-based Haggadah, the seder becomes a celebration of the certain knowledge that God will save us, and has rescued us from bondage to a secular pharaoh. Jews, and Christians, remain, for the most part, in a modern form of bondage to that which is less than God. A seder should serve as a spiritual two-by-four upside the head.

For Christians, we should know that our Lord's Passion has, like unto the Israelites of old, freed us from our bondage to sin. We have different liturgies, but the essential truth remains: first faith in God; then celebration of His acts of emancipation and salvation.