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Sunday – Passover (April 12-20)
In Judaism’s Passover seder, there’s a tradition to leave a place at the table for the prophet Elijah. According to Brandeis University’s Joseph Dorman, the custom is “an evolving symbol of hope and redemption,” with Elijah’s return symbolizing the Messiah’s earthly arrival.
Dorman notes that this is a strange role for Elijah, who was “an impassioned firebrand.” His zealotry was too much for the world to handle and even God saw him as over the top at one point. If he was to be admitted to the Passover meal—the practice dates back to the 11th century—he would have to be tamed down a bit, and Dorman says that this Passover Elijah “is zealous to right wrongs. He’s zealous to help the poor. He can’t stay away from Earth when somebody is in trouble.”
Mage Piercy’s Elijah or Eliyahu combines both the uncomfortable zealotry and the commitment to bringing out the best in us (which, after all, can be uncomfortable). We need Elijah “in rough times, out of smoke/ and dust that swirls blinding us.” He may not be decorous, sometimes appearing “in the form a wild man,/ as a homeless sidewalk orator.” But the words that burn and cut us also “cut us loose so we rise and go again/ over the sharp rocks upward.”
Chag Pesach Sameach! Happy Passover!
The Cup of Eliyahu
By Marge Piercy
In life you had a temper.
Your sarcasm was a whetted knife.
Sometimes you shuddered with fear
but you made yourself act
no matter how few stood with you.
Open the door for Eliyahu
that he may come in.
Now you return to us
in rough times, out of smoke
and dust that swirls blinding us.
You come in vision, you come
in lightning on blackness.
Open the door for Eliyahu
that he may come in.
In every generation you return
speaking what few want to hear
words that burn us, that cut
us loose so we rise and go again
over the sharp rocks upward.
Open the door for Eliyahu
that he may come in.
You come as a wild man,
as a homeless sidewalk orator,
you come as a woman taking the bima,
you come in prayer and song,
you come in a fierce rant.
Open the door for Eliyahu
that she may come in.
Prophecy is not a gift, but
sometimes a curse, Jonah
refusing. It is dangerous
to be right, to be righteous.
To stand against the wall of might.
Open the door for Eliyahu
that he may come in.Previous Passover Posts
Chaya Lester: Ask Not for Whom the Bush Burns
Adam Zagajewski: Passover, a Time to Remember Refugees
Harvey Shapiro: Passover Originated in Poetic Vision
Marge Piercy: Choosing the Desert over Bondage
Henry Weinfield: A Ritual for Wanderers
Harvey Shapiro: Drawn Forth to Eat the History Feast
George Moses Horton: Must I Dwell in Slavery’s Night?
Norman Finkelstein: Blood on the Door Posts
Norman Finkelstein: Death and Miracles and Stars without Number
Nicole Krauss: Replacing the Temple with the Torah
Muriel Rukeyser: The Journeys of the Night Survive
Primo Levi: A Night Different from All Other Nights
