Pesah was celebrated with great joy in the times of the Bet haMiqdash (Temple of Jerusalem, destroyed in the year 68 of the common era). Hundreds of thousands of Jews came to Yerushalayim from all corners of Israel to sacrifice the qorban pesah (a sheep or goat) on the 14th of Nisan. They were staying with relatives or acquaintances, or many times, wherever there was room. The houses in Yerushalayim were open to all those who needed a place to stay. And only if there was no more room available in a house, it was announced by hanging a red cloth on top of the door. In our days we remember this act of hospitality when we say at the beginning of the Haggadah: “that everyone who wants to participate in the Pesah Seder, should come in and participate with us”. In the houses, people gathered in groups of families, friends and guests called “haburot” or in the singular “habura”. Each habura, which could consist of 50, 60 and up to 100 people, who partake of the same qorban.
The lamb was taken in the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan to the Bet HaMiqdash by one or two representatives of each habura, and it was sacrificed while the Hallel was recited.
There is a beautiful custom, which some continue doing today, and which was practiced for centuries in remembrance of this Hallel on the eve of Pesah. Do you know when people used to bake the Matsot that were used in the Pesah Seder? On the 14th of Nisan! That is, in the afternoon on the eve of Pesah, when the qorban was sacrificed. This is the ideal time to prepare the Matsot anyways: the same time at which the halot are usually prepared on a normal Friday. And while the Matsot were prepared on the eve of Pesah, the family would sing the Hallel!
Let’s go back to Yerushalayim. After being slaughtered, the animal was roasted in one piece and taken to the house. At night, already the 15th of Nisan, the Seder was held more or less as we do today. The Haggada was read; the questions of Ma Nishtana were asked; a lot of food was served, including other qorbanot like hagiga, and all accompanied, of course, by Matsa, Maror and Haroset. People sat on couches or cushions and ate reclined, like nobles. They drank four cups of tempered wine, toasting for our salvation, redemption, freedom, and assignment as the chosen people. At the end of the dinner, before midnight, the qorban pesah was distributed as afiqoman (last meal, or an after-meal) among all the members of the habura. Everyone had to eat from that qorban at least a piece of the size of an olive (kazait). Today we usually put on the tray of Pesah a bone with meat (or among the Ashkenazim, a chicken leg) to remember the qorban Pesah. And also, at the end of the Sede,r we eat an additional portion of Matsa, the afiqoman saying: “[We eat this matsa] in memory of the qorban Pesah, which was eaten once one is satisfied”.
After eating the qorban Pesah, we recited the Birkat haMazon, the blessing of gratitude to HaShem for our food.
Towards midnight, once the Pesah dinner was over, something “magical” happened. People went up to the terraces of their houses and from there, looking towards the Bet haMiqdash, which was lit by a full moon, they sang the Hallel, the Psalms of Tehillim which are recited thanking HaShem for having freed us from Egypt. I believe this was the most beautiful moment of the night, when the voices of hundreds of thousands of Yehudim, the whole Jewish People, came together singing the Hallel, all at the same time, with the same melody, filling the holy city with that extraordinary song. The Gemara says that the voices of that multitudinous chorus were so powerful that the city literally “trembled”.
In order to remember that beautiful Hallel that we sang together at the end of the Seder, and make it part of our National Memory, we all sing together the Hallel in the Synagogue, before the Seder begins.
May HaShem allow us next year to sing the Hallel, all of us together, in Yerushalayim, with one voice in front of our Bet haMiqdash. AMEN
יהי רצון שנזכה לחגוג את חג הפסח בבנין בית תפארתינו במב”י, אמן
