Nina Amir's Thoughts on Human Potential, Personal Growth and Practical Spirituality
The first and second night seders are over, but we are still eating matzah and other Pesach foods. I’m still considering the seder plate symbols and answering questions related to them. I invite you to do the same whether you are Jewish or not. The next Passover symbol on the seder plate I’m going to [...]
Today I’m considering the Passover symbol of the egg, roasted or otherwise. Called beitzah, it symbolizes rebirth and represents the second sacrificial offerings given at the ancient Temple in Jerusalem on Passover. Here are some questions that come to mind around beitzah. How do I want to be reborn? That’s a hard question to answer. [...]
Second day of Passover…on to the second symbol on the seder plate: zeroa, the lamb shank, which represents sacrifice. The zeroa symbolizes the Paschal lamb offered as the Passover sacrifice in the ancient Temple. Getting away from the idea of communal sacrifice, I am thinking about personal sacrifice now. Thus, I ask myself: What will [...]
Tonight many Jews around the world will participate in the observance Passover. They will take part in a first night seder, or service, that commemorates the Israelites freedom from slavery in Egypt. (The word “seder” actually means “order”; the service has a specific order.) I see the seder—actually the whole week of Passover—as a time [...]
Each year as Passover approaches I’m given reason to consider my fears and how I deal with them. I do this because I remember learning about how fearful the Children of Israel felt at the shore of the Red Sea as the Egyptians approached. I was at an event near my home in Silicon Valley [...]
Trust is an interesting thing. Once it’s gone, it’s very difficult to regain. If you lose it, it’s difficult to find. When you stop trusting someone-for whatever reason, you tend to put up a wall to protect yourself…or at least I do. Then I have to really work at letting them back in. They have [...]
Passover is over and bread is back in the house! More specifically, on Shabbat, we ate challah! I’m a bread lover, so a Shabbat during Passover week spent eating hard, cold, tasteless matzoh rather than soft, warm-out-of-the-oven, sweet bread just doesn’t seem right. I know, I know… Passover involves eating matzoh, the Bread of Freedom…the Bread [...]
As my daughter left this morning to attend Easter Sunday services with her non-Jewish boyfriend, I thought about what she might take away from that service. I know she won’t be thinking about Easter from a personal growth standpoint as I do. And, despite my own Jewish leanings and upbringing, as always, I look at [...]
Just as most Jews are finishing up their spring cleaning and getting ready to burn the last of their chametz, which we do on the morning before the first night of Passover, we get a chance to stop and do something totally different. It’s something we haven’t done for 28 years. Actually, it’s something we haven’t [...]
On the spring Jewish holiday of Passover, Jews all over the world ask questions. Traditionally, we ask just four questions, and we are supplied with answers either in the Haggadah, the prayer book used during the seder, or home service conducted on Passover, or by participants at the seder. The questions – and the answers [...]
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