The Holiday of Passover

The Mat-Su Jewish Center Chabad will be celebrating the holiday of Passover with a community seder on Wednesday April 1 at 7:45 p.m. and Thursday April 2 at 10 p.m. All members of the Jewish community are invited to join in the festivities that commemorate this holy Jewish holiday.

“We are encouraging the Jewish community to reach out if they don’t have a seder, to please join us, to sign up and join us for the seder, so that as a community together we could celebrate this season of freedom and liberation and redemption, and experience again this great, awesome energy of freedom and liberation,” Rabbi Mendy Greenberg said.

Passover is a fundamental Jewish holiday that begins on the night of April 1st this year and lasts for eight days. It celebrates the freedom of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt over 3000 years ago. It is referred to as the birthday of the Jewish people.

The Passover celebration is filled with 15 symbolic events, including the eating of certain seder foods like matzah, the drinking of wine and reading from the Haggadah. The Seder doesn’t just celebrate the actions that happened many years ago, but relives the story.

The seder is more than just partaking of a physical meal and practicing the physical actions, it’s the partaking of and the understanding of a spiritual feast as well.

“It’s not just a meal, it’s much more than that,” Rabbi Greenberg said. “We go through a 15 step process. And each step takes us another rung on the journey of freedom.”

According to Rabbi Greenberg, a spiritual energy and freedom is provided by God on the night of Passover every year. That freedom is not just that of a physical oppressor, like the Israelites from Egypt thousands of years ago, it is also the freedom from our own personal limitations and boundaries. When the events of the Passover Seder are conducted at the appropriate times, the liberating energy can be channeled and utilized to break those limitations that restrict personal growth.

“When we tap into that liberating energy, to that special gift that God gave us on the night of Passover, for Jewish people by celebrating the seder, by eating the traditional foods, by eating the matzah, which is a biblical commandment by God, to eat the matzah, the same type of bread that they ate when they left Egypt 3300 years ago, by eating that food at the right time, with the right blessings, with the right prayers, we actually tap into that liberating energy and we actually are able to experience something really supernatural. We are able to get out of destructive habits and different things that stop us and keep us from really actualizing and we are really living our true potential.”

The Passover Seder will take place on April 1 at 7:45 p.m. and April 2nd at 10 p.m. Those wishing to attend are asked to RSVP on the Mat-Su Jewish Center Chabad website at: https://www.matsujewishcenter.org/seder