Universal Pesach question: Inviting the uninvited

I remember the first time I taught a class about Passover to a group of Jewish adults of mixed Jewish backgrounds, and I mentioned that the Korban Pesach ritual, the Paschal Lamb offering, that was so essential to the holiday in Temple times that it could only be eaten by Jews who believe in G-d, and by males who are circumcised.

In fact, so closely is the Korban Pesach related to Bris Milah that they are the only two mitzvot in the Torah that, when not fulfilled, carry with them the punishment of karet (Biblically prescribed excision from the Jewish people), a punishment carried out by G-d.

I was unprepared for the reaction. “You mean a non-Jew cannot participate in the seder?”

One who googles the phrase “how to run a Passover seder” must put much care into what one clicks, because a number of the top search hits will point to Christian websites dedicated to teaching people of their faith how to run an authentic seder. So it’s not just Jews who have non-Jewish friends who need to be concerned, but non-Jews themselves!

I assured the questioner that as we don’t have a Temple now and no Korban Pesach, we don’t adhere to such a restriction, because the meat that we eat, while delicious, is not the required lamb that has limitations on who may eat it. And while I don’t know what goes on at too many seders other than those that I’ve experienced, I hope that all seders do an adequate job of focusing on the concept of the Israelites’ switch from slavery to freedom, the role G-d played in bringing that goal about, and a hope that the freedom we speak of metaphorically will again be experienced by the Jewish people when anti-Semitism is eliminated from the world.

One of the themes of the seder is the number four — four questions, four sons, fours cups of wine. I once heard Rabbi Kenneth Hain of Congregation Beth Sholom in Lawrence ask, “Why three matzahs? Shouldn’t we have four matzahs?”