The Sandwich

The Sandwich  

When the Holy Temple stood in Jerusalem, Passover was celebrated as it was meant to be celebrated. The highlight of the celebration was eating the sandwich that contained the meat of the Paschal offering together with the Matzah and the bitter herbs. Once the Temple was destroyed, and we are unable to offer the Paschal offering, there is no Biblical obligation to eat a sandwich. Instead, we eat a portion of biblically mandated Matzah[1], after which we eat the Rabbinically mandated bitter herbs, followed by a sandwich of Matzah and bitter herbs to commemorate the Passover sandwich of temple times. Before we bite into the sandwich we say:

“Thus did Hillel do at the time of the Holy Temple: He would combine Passover -- lamb, Matzah and Maror and eat them together, as it said: "They shall eat it with Matzah and bitter herbs."

In our lives we each have "Matzah moments", moments in which we experience the liberating blessings of life. Moments when we feel truly free and liberated. We also have "bitter herb" moments, moments in which we feel the bitterness of challenges and difficulty.

The bitter herbs are part of life. Every person experiences some measure of hardship and challenge. The “free” person is one who is not enslaved by life’s difficult challenges, but rather, he or she grows from them. The bitter experiences of life, when approached with faith and courage, have the ability of bringing out the greatest potential of the human being.

Yet, initially, the Matzah and the bitter herbs are eaten separately. That’s because In the moment of pain, we often don’t see any redeeming factor. In the moment of challenge all we see is difficulty. Only after the fact, once we climb out of the challenge, once we attain freedom, can we look back and view the past suffering as a step toward freeing our deepest spirits. From our perspective, the pain and the freedom cannot mix. We therefore eat the Matzah and the bitter herbs separately.

And then we make a sandwich.

We remind ourselves, that there was a place in time, when the Holy Temple stood in Jerusalem, That spirituality was easily accessible. At that time, a person like Hillel could combine the Matzah and the bitter herbs. He could combine the suffering with the salvation. At the very moment that he was experiencing the challenge, he could feel that his challenge was part of a sandwich. His challenge was an integral part of the free person he would become.

The Jew living in spiritual exile, may not be able to feel that the challenges in his life is part of a bigger story of freedom. He, however, could and should remember Hillel’s perspective. Eating the sandwich, in addition to being a source of encouragement, will make him a bit more like Hillel. 

[1] The Torah commands us to eat the meat of the paschal sacrifice together with Matzah and bitter herbs. After the destruction of the temple, when there are no sacrifices, there is no biblical Mitzvah to eat the bitter herbs, since the bitter herbs are an accessory to the Paschal sacrifice which we no longer offer. There is, however, another verse that commands us to eat Matzah on the night of Pesach. Since this verse does not mention the paschal sacrifice we understand it to mean that there is a commandment to eat Matzah even when there is no paschal sacrifice.