by Rabbi Russ Resnik 

In honor of Passover, I'd like to share a message I wrote a few years back.

Moses begins his Torah not in Sinai, but in Egypt. The sons of Israel receive the first of the revealed teachings while they are still in bondage to Pharaoh. Most of these initial instructions cover the regulations of Passover that continue to provide the framework for our seder to this day, even though the Passover lamb itself has not been sacrificed for nearly two millennia.

It is no mystery, then, why the reading from the Prophets chosen for the Shabbat before Passover (April 19 this year) is the final chapter of Malachi, which includes this instruction: "Remember the Torah of Moses my servant, which I commanded him at Horev for all Israel, both statutes and judgments" (3:22). Moses gives the initial instructions for Passover before "all Israel" arrives at Horev, but he reiterates the instructions at Horev (Exodus 23:14-15). We know how to keep Passover because of the "statutes and judgments" that Moses has given us. Moreover, Moses is the central figure in the story of our redemption from Egypt. The mystery is that the name of Moses hardly appears in the Passover Haggadah. Perhaps, as with the absence of the name of God from the scroll of Esther, Moses so pervades the story that he need not be mentioned directly. Passover is the Passover of Moses.

After the command to remember Moses, the Lord introduces another figure in the final verses of the prophecy of Malachi:

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse (3:23-24).

Elijah is the harbinger of redemption. Even as we keep the Passover of Moses, we look for Elijah to bring a new Passover. Passover is z'man cherutenu, the season of our redemption, when God lifted us from bondage and helplessness into an intimate relationship with himself. It is also the season in which we look ahead to a redemption still to come. The sages say that on this night we were redeemed, and on this night we shall be redeemed (Exodus Rabbah 18:12).

There is the Passover of Moses and the Passover of Elijah, but they are one Passover. Passover is the central story of the Hebrew Scriptures. All the rest of the stories flow into it or out from it. It is the story that makes Israel a people, and every year we affirm our status as God's people by retelling the story through the Passover seder. Remembrance binds us together, but so does hope; Passover past and Passover to come. The Passover of Moses and the Passover of Elijah.

As Messianic Jews we have another, equally central story; the story of Messiah, who walked and taught among us, died for our sins, and rose again. Our Jewish identity as followers of Messiah hinges on the fact that this story is not separate, but inextricably intertwined with the other, as the Passover of Elijah is intertwined with the Passover of Moses. Yeshua presents himself in Jerusalem at the time the Passover lambs are being selected. He eats of the Passover as his final meal, dies during Passover, when the lambs are being slain, and rises from the dead about the time the first sheaf of new grain is being presented in the Temple as a symbol of renewed life. Messiah is our Passover, not replacing the old, but renewing and carrying it forward.

The tendency in the religious world has been to completely divorce these two stories. The Haggadah remembers the Passover of Moses, the redemption past, and longs for the Passover of Elijah and redemption to come. But it cannot imagine the present redemption accomplished by Yeshua the Messiah as part of its story. The Church emphasizes the redemption to come (or that has come in Messiah) and downplays Moses and the redemption past. It portrays Israel's story as a relic, a long-ago redemption that has little bearing upon the present.

Despite this polarization, the Haggadah instructs us to live in the present:

In every generation one must see oneself as though having personally come forth from Egypt, as it is written: "And you shall tell your child on that day, 'This is done because of what the Lord did for me when I came forth from Egypt'" (Ex. 13:8). It was not our ancestors alone whom the Holy One, blessed be He, redeemed; He redeemed us too, with them, as it is written: "He brought us out from there that He might bring us in and give us the land which He had promised our ancestors" (Deut. 6:23).

Here Moses and Elijah meet. In essence the two stories are one. We taste in the present the redemption for which we hope, as we remember the redemption in the past. Passover at its heart longs for the messianic day of redemption.

A few years ago, Rabbi Sherwin Wine, founder of Humanistic Judaism, was interviewed in Moment magazine (February 1999). The interviewer asked, "What is your answer for messianic Jews?" Wine included the beliefs of both "the people who think Jesus is the messiah, and . the Lubavitchers" in his response:

There is a figure sent by God who is going to rescue us. Therefore, I find all messianic thinking dangerous. I think it's one of the dangerous ideas that came out of the Jewish past. Because messianism is utopianism, and utopianism is a very dangerous thing.. If you want utopian goals, then you're going to be disappointed and frustrated all the time. The way to live the life of courage is to have goals that are realistic and appropriate; therefore leopards lying down with lambs to me is absolutely meaningless. That's banal. Realistic expectation is what is important.

Despite Wine's innovations, however, the central story of the Jewish people remains messianic to the core. Moses is "a figure sent by God" to rescue us. Our ancestors refused to accept the "realistic and appropriate" goal of merely seeking improved conditions of servitude in Egypt, but, according to the Haggadah, "cried out to the Lord, the God of our fathers" for deliverance. Passover also preserves the "utopianism" of generations of our people who set out a cup of wine for Elijah every year, and were not "disappointed and frustrated," but sustained, by their messianic longings.

This messianic longing demonstrates that the Passover of Moses and the Passover of Elijah are not to be separated; remembrance of the past and hope for the future, the story of Israel and the story of Messiah are thoroughly intertwined. Yeshua's death and resurrection only make sense against the backdrop of Passover, and his work of redemption is evident at the original Passover in Egypt. Passover is the messianic festival, incomplete without the Cup of Elijah and the final proclamation, "Next Year in Jerusalem!"

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Russ Resnik