What Makes This Shabbat Different From All Other Shabbats?

Tonight starts Shabbat HaGadol, “The Great Shabbat,” the shabbat preceding Passover. There are a lot of interpretations about why it’s “great;” the most common is probably that, by tradition, it’s the Shabbat when rabbis give their longest sermons, detailing the laws of Passover and our obligations for its preparation. (Um…great?) Another is that Shabbat HaGadol is “great” merely for its proximity to Passover, the holiday which marks our covenant with God and retells our most famous story. 

A page of Talmud.

When I was a first year cantorial student, I heard Rabbi Michael Marmur speak about the origins of the name Shabbat HaGadol. It turns out that it was only relatively recently that the appellation was fully spelled out. Before that, it was always referred to in an abbreviated form common in Hebrew, with only the first two letters followed by a Hebrew punctuation mark called a chupchik (similar to an apostrophe or quotation mark). To put it in English letters, the word wasn’t typically written “HaGadol” but rather just “HaGa,” and everyone just knew that it was short for “HaGadol,” or “the great.” 

But what if that wasn’t the intended word? 

Turns out, it might have been called Shabbat Haggadah, marking the Shabbat when we review the text of the Haggadah, the guidebook for our Passover seders. “Haggadah” and “HaGadol” both begin with the same two letters. In an Orthodox observance of Passover you have a huge amount of Hebrew and Aramaic to read, so everyone responsible for leading a seder would take their haggadot off the shelf the weekend before and read through it to refresh their memory. Hence, Shabbat Haggadah. And because it was rarely spelled out completely, we took an inaccurate assumption and turned it into a millennium of tradition. 

Your seder this year might be different than in past years, separated as we are from family and friends, and when every grocery trip feels like a safari. But sometimes mistakes can become sacred traditions, and accommodations can be hallowed by circumstance and love. Whatever you do this year to mark Passover, do it with love. Don’t stress that it might not look like what you “traditionally” do; to rephrase the last line of the haggadah, next year we can try and be in Jerusalem. This year, we’re going to appreciate what we’ve got. 

And may we all find some space for creativity, holiness, and sweetness in the days and weeks ahead.