Los Angeles daily herald., 1888-03-28
THE PASSOVER.

ogntod yesterday af the synagogue, on
which occasion Rabbi Schneider de-
Hvered the following upon the Fright
Colobrxtion Of the passover"
Nobody can reasonably deny that
religion Is question which concerns
every human being, whether learned
and hlahiy educated or not. Hence q
mnn or woman need not be scholar
= order to be religious; and yet,
u1xange to say, the time is not SO very
IN distant when it was necessary to
- we'll versed in the Tslmud and
Ghulchau Urach in order to be
oapable Of celebrating the Passover
festival Gin accord with all its laws,
statutes, observances and cere-
mopies,n Az that time this festival
1as nEscsd~a y ~ an immense revolu.
1ion of every Jewish household, and
The activity Of orr good mothers and
ysrael's housewives were taxed to the
very utmost. Indeed, the Talmud's
ordinance in this respect reads :
0Thirty days before Pessach the laws
IN statutes Of this important holiday
hsd to beIstudied," !" in order to make
the people familiar with all the
1inute details connected with the
iostivAl.
Now times have, thank God,
changed, and for us the laws and or
1inances of the Pessach are by no
rneans Of so complicated nature as
thev were in olden days. We have
errived to A stage of development,
where the religious ideas, sentiments,
feelings and thoughts conveyed to us
- this important holiday in their
e1earness and simplicity are of vaster
G3gnificance to US than the mere me-
chanical street practice OF its mani
Anld observances in their endless ram
i0cations. We too, most sincerely,
believe that the festival of liberty
ought to produce in us change and
thorough transformation. But the
sublime ideas Of freedom and re-
demption from the thraldom of slav-
ery ought to effect not SO much a
transformation of the dwelling house
- that OF the inhabitants thereof, not
20 much OF kitchen, Of pot and kettle
and cellar as of heart and mind,
thought and feeling. As in times of
ycre, so we too are anxious to call the
special attention of Israelite mothers
70 this festival, but not merely for the
purpose Of cleansing and decorating
The house in it's outward appearance,
but for the sake of making the Jewish
home training school for all that is
rood, noble, charitable and humane,
IN abode where the religion Of Juda-
iam in it's essential purity is being 'fos-
tered and perpetuated.
We too, the modern teachers of
Judaism, want our people to celebrate
this festival of liberty conscientiously
and we'll prepared. 1t is therefore
that We exclaim: The preparation
for its true celebration lays to say
The least, just as much stress
upon the removal of the leaven OF
mean passions and wicked desires
from our hearts as upon the mere
literal fulfillment of the ordinance !:
Yo shall remove the leaven from
your houses. We call attention to
the great fact, that after all the
thoughts, ideas and lessons of the
exodus Of our ancestors from the
land Of slavery and their deliverance
from the bondage and tyranny OF
( despotic Egypt are superior to the in
nnmerable minor details also con-
nected with this historical event.
It was moro especially in connec-
tion with this Passover holiday that
the plain precepts of the Bible were
surrounded with thousand execra-
lions. He was just with regard to
this festival of liberty and of
swakening nature in the spring, that
the following sublime words of the
Midrash were literally fulfilled by the
words: Be careful not to make the
fence around the garden as high as
the trees themselves, for storm
would befall the fence and the fence
would destroy the trees and flowers.
And you all know that, so far as
Judaism is concerned, there ia more
truth than poetry in this allegory.
For the storm of the new age has
mercilessly destroyed the numberless
1ences around the old law, and be-
cause these fences were higher than
the treeR in the garden of religion,
the ruifed fences have badly hurt
very many Of the most fragrant pro-
ductions in the vineyard of Judaism
It is therefore the duty Of our
own present teachers to gather
and to preserve the healthy
germs and branches of religious ideas
and thoughts, and to nourish them
lovingly in the newly planted garden
Of Jewish reform.
Let US do this on the hand of the
interesting text; and say it to thy son
ON that day and speak to him. IT cele.
brate this festival on account of what
God hath done unto me when l left
Egypt. And it shall as a sign on thy
hand and q memorial between thy
eyes, so that the teaching of the eter-
nal may be in thy mouth"
1t deserves passing notice only that
the passage son thy hand" and "be-
tween thy eyes" has already been in
ferpreted by the Rashbam, the grand
son Of Rashi as being merely a figure
Of speech and conveying only the idea
Of having the word Of God before our
mind all the time. n other words
this passage is not to be taken liter
oily, commanding the laying of the
s0-called Tefllin, any more than the
words THOU shalt engraved the
words Of God npon the tablets of thy
heart" !" mean to say that we should
4eke q chieel and engrave the words
q God into our breast.
Two powerful elements within our
heart-the charm Of novelty and the
yearning and craving after change on
the one side, and the love of the old
and the desire to retain the customs
Il the past on the other, have since
lime i,nnAemoriai been engaged in the
Struggle for dominion. Change is
indeed the essence Of life, or, as the
Greek philosopher Heraplyt SO fit
tingly expresses it, Pan,ta rel, every
thing flows, moves, fuctuates; this is
the law Of progress and development.
Hence stability and progress are still
<y--s~~ g