Hallel: First Day(s) Pesach: Walking with a Flute II

We can easily imagine that the joy of the song as the people gathered to begin their journey out of Egypt was exponentially greater than the song they sang as they offered the Pesach; it was an indication that their first Hallel actually changed them, and prepared them to rise even higher:

“When Israel left Egypt, Jacob’s family from among a people who spoke a strange language, Judah became God’s Holy Place, Israel, His realm.”

They experienced the sense of becoming God’s Holy Place and His realm as they marched into the desert with full faith that:

The Sea saw it and ran away. The Jordan River reversed course. The mountains danced like deer, the hills like lambs.

What’s with you, Sea, that you flee? With the Jordan, that you turn around? With the Mountains, that you dance like deer? With the hills, like lambs?

Quake, you Land, before your Master, before the Lord of Jacob!

Who turned the rock into a pool of water. Pebbles into a source of water.”

They experienced God as Hamakom – The Omnipresent, or The Place – when they ate the Pesach in the safety of their homes. They experienced how their Pesach changed their home, and transformed it into God’s Place and Realm. They knew that they would be able to take that sense of place with them even into the desert.

We sing this paragraph as if we too were marching into the unknown future with the sense that just as we made our homes God’s place and realm with the Seder, we can carry that sense of place with us wherever we go, and in whatever we do. We sing this paragraph with the joy and confidence of Transformers of the world, all of creation, into God’s place.