by sue fishkoff
jta
Why is April 3 different from all other nights in April?
On this night Conservative, Orthodox and some Reconstructionist Jews outside Israel will sit down to their second Passover seder, while Reform and Israeli Jews will eat as they do on any other night of the holiday.
That’s a long-standing tradition. But stirring the pot are some younger American Jews returning from Israel programs who want to cast off their longer diaspora observance and adopt Israeli practice in solidarity with the Jewish state.
“You come back, you’re slightly shell-shocked, and you’re trying to hold onto what you experienced there,” said Rabbi Kenneth Brander, dean of the Center for the Jewish Future at Yeshiva University.
This time it really is Israel’s fault.
For the first time Trebbin celebrated Passover for seven days instead of eight and attended just one seder. “I like it,” said Jennifer Trebbin, 23, who spent last year in Israel with Project Otzma, a 10-month volunteer program for recent college graduates. “There’s something about doing it the Israeli way that feels right.”
But some young people seek rabbinic guidance on what to do.
That’s what Mike Schwartz, 20, did when he was on Young Judaea’s Year Course two years ago. “I talked to the Conservative rabbi on the program, and he said if you’re living in Israel, do seven days.”
His rabbi interpreted “living in Israel” broadly. The Talmud advises Jews to keep their home customs while visiting Israel unless they are planning to live there permanently, in which case they should adopt Israeli custom.
The differing practices go back more than 2,000 years to Jerusalem, when the dates for Jewish festivals in the coming month were declared by the rabbis of the Sanhedrin, the community’s legal body, according to when they sighted the new moon.
Since it took time for messengers to reach diaspora communities with that report, a “yom tov sheni,” or “second festival day,” was added to biblical festivals outside Israel to ensure that Jews there observed at least part of each festival on the correct day.
The extra diaspora day was preserved even after the institution of a fixed calendar, with the Talmud declaring that Sukkot and Passover be observed for eight days, Shavuot and Rosh Hashanah for two.
Yom Kippur was not extended because of the burden of fasting, and Rosh Hashanah is celebrated for two days even within Israel because it falls on the new moon instead of mid-month like the other festivals.
In the 19th century, Reform leaders in the United States abandoned the extra festival day, declaring they did not accept the concept of being in exile. Most Reform Jews today understand their shorter observance as being in line with Israeli practice.
Orthodox Jews continue to keep the extra days.
Brander said that in his 20 years as a pulpit rabbi, he’s had to sit down with young returnees from Israel. He shows them the Jewish sources and explains that Jews in the diaspora “aren’t in control of their destiny and can lose their calendar at any moment,” as happened in the concentration camps and in the Soviet Union.
Most Conservative Jews also keep the extra festival days, despite a 1960s ruling by the movement’s Rabbinical Assembly permitting them to change their practice.
Rabbi Shai Gluskin, director of publishing and online resources for the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, said most Reconstructionist Jews consider the extra day an archaic custom rendered unnecessary by modern technology. But they also usually observe two seders anyway, he said.
That’s “a deeply held, long tradition in the American Jewish community,” he said, whereas the eight-day custom doesn’t have the same pull.
Until halacha is changed, Ayal Robkin, a 21-year-old who was on the Orthodox track of Young Judaea’s Year Course in Israel, will follow Orthodox custom. “There’s a commandment: don’t separate yourself from the community,” he said.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California