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ITZHAK PERLMAN

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The world's foremost
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CARLO MARIA =LIN'

A family gathers for the Seder. Pesach begins Monday night.

Pesach Also Celebrates
The Coming of Spring

YITZCHAK DINUR

Special to The Jewish News

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VIVALDI
THE FOUR SEASONS
ITZHAK PERLMAN
Israel Philharmonic

TCHAIKOVSKY

VIOLIN CONCERTO

SERENADE MELANCOLIOUE

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ITZHAK PERLMAN

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Tel Aviv-born Itzhak Perlman cap-
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accompanied by the Israel Philharmonic
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62

Friday, April 10, 1987

erusalem — In addi-
tion to being a festival
of freedom and rede-
mption
from
slavery,
Passover is a festival of
spring - a festival of rebirth
of nature and nation. As
Passover occurs in the month
of March or April (depending
on the correspondence of the
Jewish lunar calendar with
the civil calendar), it coin-
cides more or less with spring
in the northern hemisphere.
In the land of Israel, this is
the time when the heavy
rains of winter are being re-
placed by the dews of spring.
For this reason, the morning
prayer for the first day of
Passover contains a prayer
for dew, and many of the
poems in the Passover
prayers evoke spring and na-
ture.
Like most Jewish festivals,
Passover has a number of
separate aspects now consid-
ered inseparable. Each aspect
is given a name in the Bible
or in later Jewish traditional
literature: the Festival of
Pesach (Exodus 34:25); the
festival of Matzot (Exodus
23:15 and 34:18); the Time of
Our Freedom .(Mishna
Pesachim 10:5); the Festival
of Spring and Agriculture
(Deuteronomy 16:1).
Today the themes of the
Passover sacrifice, the eating
of matzot, national redemp-
tion by divine providence and
the idea of national freedom
are more prominent, whereas
the theme of the Festival of
Spring is less significant, too
often taken for granted and
sometimes entirely forgotten.
In the Bible, Nisan, the
Jewish month in which
Passover falls, is called the
"Month of Spring (Aviv)."
Just as spring begins the
year in nature, so Nisan is
the first month in the
enumeration of the months of

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

the year. The word aviv is
also the Hebrew agricultural
term for barley, in the early
part of spring, which is not
yet ripe. This is the begin-
ning of the barley harvest;
and the counting of the Omer
(the sheaf) which begins on
the first day of Passover, the
morning after the Seder and
which continues until the end
of the barley harvest. The
beginning of the wheat har-
vest — 50 days later at
Shavuot — is a reminder of
the ceremonial cutting of the
sheaf (Omer) at the begin-
ning of the barley harvest in
First and Second Temple
times. In those times, the
sheaf was placed on the Tern-
ple altar.
In the Haggadah, spring
does not receive much atten-
tion. The Haggadah stresses
the Divine redemption and
the covenant aspects and
leaves the reading of the
Song of Songs, which celeb-
rates spring and God's love
for the Jewish people, to the
end.
The eating of matzot is also
connected with spring. It is
not just a ceremonial proce-
dure following an arbitrary
divine command, nor is it
merely a remembrance of the
haste with which the Israel-
ites left Egypt so that their
bread had no time to rise.
Flavius Josephus, the an-
cient Jewish historian, as-
serts that the matzot had to
be made of the previous
year's grain, and that the
Jews were not allowed to par-
take of the new grain until
after the sheaf of barley had
been ceremonially placed on
the Temple altar. After that,
they might partake of the
new year's grain but leaven
was still forbidden until the
end of the festival, because
the leaven somehow made
the grain impure.
This is of no modern sig-
nificance, as today matzot are
all factory made before the