*The PesachOffering: A Symbol of Unity* **“The Pesachoffering which our ancestors ate… because God passed over**.” God gave them the commandment of the Passover offering because Israel could not be saved from the plague of the first born if they were not considered to be the portion and the of the Holy One. That is why God commanded them to make an offering. The only reason that they were God’s people was for the purpose of serving God. It was through this service that they became God’s people. That is why the plague of the first born did not affect the Israelites. It is for this reason that the offering that they brought was called Pesach. In Aramaic, Pesachis translated chayes, compassion. Because Israel was the Holy One’s portion, God took compassion upon them and made sure they weren’t destroyed. God choose Israel from all the other nations to be God’s own; just as God is singular, so God chose a singular nation. That is why everything associated with this divine service is associated with one. • It is a commandment to make a whole offering with its limbs and innards and not to divide up the offering. Something divided up is no longer one. • It must be eaten by one household. • It is prohibited for the offering to be shared by two groupings of people or to eat it two places. In this way it must be eaten in a state of unity and wholeness. • The lamb must be eaten when it is one year old. If it is two years old, it is no longer in a state of oneness. • It must be a sheep and not a calf because the sheep is considered a more refined animal. Commenting on the following verse, “Israel is a scattered sheep,” (Jer. 50:17) the sages state, “Why is Israel compared to sheep? If you strike one limb of the sheep, all of its limbs feel it, so too, if one member of Israel sins, all of Israel feels the consequences. Achan¹ was one person during the time of Joshua, all of Israel experienced the consequences.” This can be explained as follows: the sheep has a more refined nature unlike the calf which is more coarse and tough. Its nature is more spiritual. Therefore, when one is beaten all of them suffer. • It must be masculine and not feminine. The masculine form is considered more unified than the female maternal nature. Therefore, the offering should be from the male animals and not the female. • It must be roasted and cannot be cooked in water or other juices because cooking in fluids causes its parts to fall apart. Roasting, on the other hand, causes the meat to stay together with the gravy around it. It can only be eaten when it has been roasted. • Do not break the bones; if one broke the bones it would divided into parts, which is not proper. • One should eat the Passover offering with matzahand maror. ¹is slavery – yet we eat them together. This is to contradict the heretics who claim that many can go forth from the one. Only one thing can come forth from one. As a result, when they see the complexity in the world, they will see that the many must have gone forth from many. As a result of all these things that emphasize oneness, one can conclude: this offering is for the one God, and should be eaten with matzahand maror. From God goes forth both freedom and slavery, the wound and the cure. Because God is one, God is everything. There is nothing but God. From the One come opposites.

footnotes: ¹ See the story of Achan in the book of Judges, chapter 7. According to the narrative, Achan pillaged an ingot of gold, a quantity of silver, and a "beautiful Babylonian garment" from Jericho, in contravention of God's directive that "all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the Lord: they shall come into the treasury of the Lord" (Joshua 6:19) Although the account suggests that Achan personally was guilty of coveting and taking these spoils, the chapter opens with a statement that the whole community of "the children of Israel had committed a trespass.”(Wikipedia) ¹ Could this be a denial of the demonic as a separate realm? God is one but from God comes all the complexity of the world including the things we think of as the opposite. The Passover offering represents redemption while the maror