From Purim to Pesach
Purim and Pesach share a wide range of connective associations. The holiday of Purim occurs during the last month of the year, the month of Adar, while the holiday of Pesach is celebrated during the first month of the year, the month of Nisan. As discussed earlier in the section on Tu B’Shvat, both of these holidays occur on a full moon, entail drinking a good amount of wine, and include eating as a central facet of the ritual experience. Furthermore, Purim and Pesach also share the idea of redemption, albeit in different degrees and circumstances. Additionally, both holidays begin with the letter peh, an interesting fact whose significance will be explored shortly. For all these reasons, the time between Purim and Pesach is considered a period of connecting geula to geula, redemption to redemption.
Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh finds a beautiful allusion to these connections in the verse that describes how God spoke to Moses “mouth-to-mouth,” peh el peh. The word for “mouth” in Hebrew is peh, like the letter, and thus alludes to both Purim and Pesach, as mentioned above. This idea is strengthened by the word “to” (el), which appears in between the two “mouths,” so to speak, as the numerical value of el equals 31, the exact number of days between Purim and Pesach!
Not only do both of these holidays begin with the letter peh, which means mouth, but they also have in common the aspect of speech, which obviously emanates from the mouth. One of the main mitzvoth of Purim is to recite the book of Esther, not only once but twice. Thus, telling the story of what happened in Shushan long ago is an absolute central piece of one’s observance and celebration of Purim.
In the Mishnah, it states that anyone who reads the book of Esther backwards has not fulfilled their obligation. An obvious question is: who in the first place would think of reading the story backwards?! Therefore, many commentaries explain that the intention behind this law is that anyone who reads the Book of Esther as if it happened a long time ago, with little relevance to us today, has, in effect, “read it backward,” and therefore they have not fulfilled their obligation in the sense of understanding what the story is really about.
The role of speech in the holiday of Pesach is also a central feature of the holiday. Firstly, the text we read at the Seder on Pesach night is called the Haggadah, “telling [of the story of coming out of Egypt].” It is actually one of the 613 mitzvot to tell the story of coming out of Egypt on Pesach night. Additionally, it is a separate mitzvah to recall the miraculous events that occurred in Egypt every single day and night as well. Here too, telling the story and recalling our exile and subsequent redemption forms the template of the entire holiday of Pesach.
Furthermore, the Arizal explains that the word Pesach itself alludes to the central role of speech in the context of the holiday, for when one divides the word Pesach by its syllables into two words, it reads: peh sach, “the mouth speaks.”
In the Sefer Yetzirah each month is associated with one of the twelve simple letters. The month of Nisan is considered to be created through the power of the letter hei. This letter, whose numerical value is five, is itself connected to speech inasmuch as linguistically, all sounds emanate from five different places in the mouth. In addition, the Kabbalists explicitly associate the letter hei with the power of expression. Significantly, the word Haggadah begins with the letter hei, as does the fifth section of the Haggadah, in which the entire story of what occurred in Egypt is recounted.
Thus, we see that both letters which make up the word peh (peh and hei), mouth, are related to the power of speech and expression. On a personal level, exile is the inability to express oneself, a blocked state which eventually leads to feelings of isolation, frustration, being misunderstood and ultimately unfulfilled. Redemption, on the other hand, is manifest in the ability to actualize and to express oneself freely and without fear.
In the earlier section on Pesach we discussed in great length the role of da’at, knowledge, in the exile and redemption from Egypt. For our purposes now, focused as we are on speech, we will simply mention a statement in the Zohar that — “knowledge is hidden within the mouth.” There is a profound, even transformative, power in the process of speaking one’s mind; for without speech, thoughts remain unfulfilled, unrealized and unexpressed. Speech thus brings thought further down into lived reality, galvanizing and directing it from a state of unrealized potential into a knowable and potent manifestation. This is why speech is so important to both Purim and Pesach. For by telling the story, we not only strengthen our connection to Jewish history, but we make it personal and relevant to our own lives in the present.
The idea that “knowledge is hidden in the mouth” is the secret of the Jewish Oral Tradition, which has been handed down faithfully for thousands of years and is still alive and well in our own day. The purpose of coming out of Egypt was in order that the Jewish people would receive the Torah on Sinai fifty days later. The Torah that was received at Sinai has both a written and oral component which are intrinsically linked together. Trying to understand the written Torah without the Oral Tradition is not only impossible, but actually leads to a false and mistaken view of what Torah is.
It is interesting to note that, according to the Sages, the people of Israel received the Torah once again on Purim in a deeper manner than they had when they received it at Sinai. For at Sinai, there was an element of subtle coercion present. This was due to the overwhelming nature of the revelatory experience, which made it seem that destiny was being played out in an inevitable manner. On Purim, though, once the people had realized how God had orchestrated their deliverance from the evil designs of Haman, they embraced and accepted both the written and oral Torah from a place of true free will. In fact, the absence of God’s name from the story of Purim created the space necessary for the people to proactively assume a sense of urgency, thus animating their power of free-will.
One last connection between Purim and Pesach relates to the ever-important concepts of renewal and novelty. Pesach occurs in the first month of the year, in the spring season when all of nature is renewing itself. Purim likewise has an aspect of newness due to the fact that it is a holiday established by the Sages of the time, and in fact, was the first Rabbinic holiday added to the Jewish calendar. It took courageous and visionary insight to establish an entirely new holiday not originally included in the Torah.
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach taught that the exalted level of consciousness of ad d’lo yada present on Purim can only be truly integrated on Pesach. He explains that, historically, after the story of Purim, we remained in exile under the rulership of King Achashverosh, whereas during Pesach we broke free entirely from our servitude to Pharaoh. Bringing out new Pesach dishes every year symbolizes our desire to prepare our vessels for newness and rejuvenation, as well as to more holistically integrate the transcendent experience of ad d’lo yada from Purim.
In the Sefer Yetzirah it is stated that “the end is en-wedged in the beginning and the beginning and the end.” Purim, coming at the end of the year, leads directly into Pesach, which comes at the beginning of the year. Thus, we go, every year, deeper and higher — from redemption to redemption, from strength to strength, from celebration to celebration. L’Chaim! L’Chaim! L’Chaim!!!
