“I will be your tour guide tonight,” the rabbi said as he entered the dining hall Friday. “Tonight is going to be different from all other nights. Tonight we are leaving Egypt.”
With that, Rabbi Mendy Goldstein led roughly 90 people at Chabad of Naperville through the 15 steps of the Passover Seder, a ritutalized feast that celebrates the Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt thousands of years ago.
The Naperville Jewish Center has been hosting the community ceremony for 16 years, but this weekend’s event had its largest crowd yet, bringing in people from around the western suburbs, many families with young kids in attendance.
“It’s educational. We’re passing the story onto the next generation,” youth Rabbi Tzvi Tornek said. The Seder is about asking questions about the faith and “really captures the imagination of children and youth,” he said.
The event started with women and children lighting candles.
“This is so special,” said Alta Goldstein, co-director of Chabad of Naperville. “When we light, keep in mind we are doing what Jewish women have been doing for hundreds of generations, ever since Sarah did it.” Sarah was the wife of Abraham, patriarch of the Jewish faith.
“Wherever there are Jews in the world, they are lighting these candles,” Alta said. “We are doing it right here in Naperville.”
Kids take part, she said, because “every child brings light into this world. This world needs light. The way we fight this dark world is with light.”
Friday night during a community Passover Seder at Chabad of Naperville.
Participants did a sweeping motion with their arms, to bring that light toward them, then put their hands over their eyes and prayed.
During the Passover Seder, attendees drank four cups of wine (or grape juice), and ate veggies dipped in saltwater, matzah and bitter herbs, followed by a festive meal that included beef brisket, chicken and eggplant.
It was interspersed with Hebrew songs and attendees telling Seder-themed jokes randomly hidden under people’s plates.
Each step of the ritual has a specific meaning in retelling the story of the Exodus (Seder means “order” in Hebrew). For instance, during the holiday, Jews eat unleavened bread because when they left Egypt, they didn’t have time for their bread to rise so they made it without yeast. Matzah, a dry, cracker-like-bread, also represents “humility,” and being ready to receive God’s help. Whereas, traditional bread rises, or “puffs up,” much like the ego.
David Borochov, of Aurora, who attended the ceremony with his 8- and 10-year-old sons, said the celebration itself is about “freedom from the ego” and entering the spiritual realm.
The night also commemorates heritage and tradition, said Michael Farhi, of Westchester. “A lot of people try to understand what their roots were exposed to,” he said, much as many Black Americans do in examining the history of slavery in the United States.
“Tonight there’s a special energy. The energy tonight is the energy of freedom,” Rabbi Goldstein said. “We all need to go out of our own personal Egypt, our own personal exile.”
Many people nowadays, he said, are bound to their phones (electronics are forbidden during the first two days of Passover, which started Friday.)
“Every day, we have to try to experience our own personal freedom,” he said.
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Giles Bruce is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.
