Nirtzah/Acceptance

        Here we pause that our praise and petitions be accepted. Then we conclude with the song that is sung at endings and farewells, "Elijah the Prophet."

Eliahu Hanavi

Elijah the Prophet, Elijah the Tishbite,
Elijah, Elijah, Elijah the Gileadite!
May he soon come,
Soon in our day,
With the Messiah, son of David.

(One reader continues as we listen to the story that closes this celebration and marks the beginning of another, Shavuot. It is the story of another kind of acceptance.)

        Following the second night of Passover we begin the count of forty-nine days until the festival of Shavuot. Shavuot marks the time of the barley harvest in ancient Israel when pilgrims brought offerings to the Temple in Jerusalem. It is also the anniversary of God's new covenant with us at Mount Sinai. It is said in one midrash that when Moses gathered the souls of Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai, God gazed at everyone, even those people not yet born.

    There was Moses the Adoptee and spiritual seeker.
    There was his non-Jewish wife, Zipporah, and their son, Gershom.
    There were Moses' birth parents, Yocheved and Amram.
    There were Bilhah and Zilpah, surrogate mothers for Rachel and Leah.
    And there was Judah, the sperm donor for Tamar.
    There was Eliezer the rejected adoptee.
    And Ishmael the rejected surrogate son.
    There were converts like Ruth.
    And sympathizers of other faiths, like Batyah.

        Witnessing their presence, God decided to expand on the original covenant with Abraham and his descendants, to include everyone who accepted the Commandments that day.

JUST AS THERE ARE COVENANTS BY BLOOD, THERE ARE COVENANTS OF THE HEART.

BUT JUST AS THERE ARE COVENANTS OF THE HEART, THERE ARE COVENANTS BY BLOOD.

L'shana haba-a b'Y'rushalayim!!
Next year in Jerusalem!
(Next year may we find a place of wholeness, a place of peace!!)

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