Pesach

The most important place to be during the current Passover celebrations is not the Synagogue, it's the family home. More than any other festival.., and Jews have lots of them, Passover is the gathering together of family. The Passover meal starts with an open invitation. "Let anyone who is hungry come and eat. Let anyone who is needy come and join in our Passover meal". And so with children, parents and grand parents gathered together, the meal begins. Of course, if the children's grandparents are there, it also means the parents, parents in law are there. There's the wider family too. Uncles, Aunts and cousins. So it's a really happy family gathering....well, reasonably happy family gathering. How does the old phrase go..."You can choose your friends but you can't choose your family". Inevitably there will be some family members who won't be turning up to this particular "gathering of the Clans". Jewish families are just like other families, maybe even more so! There's bound to be someone who doesn't come along, someone who has fallen off his branch of the family tree.

A friend of mine is the Rabbi of a very large Synagogue. He tells me he witnesses the same scene at least once a month. He will be in a hospital supporting a family who is sitting by the bedside of someone who is seriously ill. One of their brothers or sisters confides in him how much they regret that they haven't spoken together for maybe twenty years. Often they can't even remember who said what and what the fight was all about..... and now it's too late.

A famous Rabbi once said "Not everything that's thought should be said not everything that's said should be written."

So there will be an empty chair or two at many Passover celebrations and it might not be noticed until there is no one to invite to fill it.

Of course in the Passover story, the Jews who had gone to Egypt had largely abandoned their religion and background altogether. They had tried to forget who they were and what they were and where they came from. It was then that they got themselves into trouble, Pharaoh had decided to remind them. And the "head" of the family, G-d, decided to give them another chance. They hadn't asked for it, they really didn't deserve it. But the Gamble paid off. They accepted the invitation, came together and came home.

So Just in case there's someone out there who's fallen from your family tree even if you feel they don't deserve another chance, maybe we should take a gamble, just to see... if they'd like to fill that empty chair.