Passover Thoughts

Passover begins tomorrow night, so I wanted to link to our Passover related posts:

1) In Every Generation noting the parallel between the statement of the eldest dwarf in The Silver Chair, "Those northern witches always mean the same thing, but in every age they have a different plan for getting it." And the declaration in the Passover haggadah, "In every generation they rise up to destroy us, and the Holy One Blessed be He, delivers us from their hands." 

2) Calormen Poetry: Questions contrasting the Calormen and Jewish approach to questions

3) Pre-Commemorating Christmas How Tumnus "pre-celebration" of Christmas echoes our Sages understanding of Abraham's pre-celebration of Passover.

I'll also take a moment to expand on the last of these posts. R' Gavriel Ze'ev Margolis in his haggadah called Agudat Aizov, comments as follows on the song, "Who Knows One?" This song, he asserts, is appropriate for the second half of the seder as it is a song that will be sung in the holy city of Jerusalem after the final redemption when the Jews have settled peacefully in their land. At that time, they will look back on the exile and sing of the ideals that supported them through their trials and tribulations as enumerated in this song. 

The future redemption, he continues, is the major theme of the second half of the seder, when the Exodus from Egypt is not even mentioned. It is as if, to embellish of R' Margolis' points, we are pre-celebrating the final exodus which has yet to come. We sing a song appropriately sung only after the final exodus has come to fruition. We look back on an exile of which we are still in its midst. But on Passover that's doable. For just as during the first half of the seder to relive the Exodus from Egypt, during the second half we 'pre-live' the exodus that we still pray for today.