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Posted April 7, 2008, by Rabbi Judy Abrams. Please refer to Maqom's home page for information about previous passages.

BH

PESACH: A FAMILY FEUD?
© Judith Z. Abrams, 2008

Family holidays can bring out the best‹and worst‹in family dynamics. The sages, wise as they were, understood that a young bride's first holidays away from her family might bring on a bout of homesickness. Accordingly, the Yerushalmi rules that her feelings should be taken into account when making seder preparations.

A newly married woman eats with her father on her first festival after marriage and this is called an "anxious festival" (a regel redufin). What is a regel redufin? Said Rabbi Yose Bar Rabbi Bun: This is the first festival after marriage when the husband chases his wife to the house of her father.

What if she did not go back to her father's house on the first festival after marriage? May the second festival be considered a regel redufin?

In all situations she has a regel redufin. (Y. Pesachim 8:1)

We certainly get a peak at domestic life in the sages' day here.

Discussion Questions:

1. The sages assume that the woman (and even a remarried widow has this right!) is pining for the home in which she grew to maturity and that she is entitled to express those feelings. In what kind of society would such patterns be expected to appear? Is there any remnant of that society still alive today?
      
2. Are you impressed with the sages' sensitivity to women's feelings? This phrase, regel redufin, appears only in the Yerushalmi. Why and how might Babylonian society differ from that in the land of Israel so that it wasn¹t an issue in Babylonia?
      
3. Do you have any intense family dynamics surrounding seders in your house? How do you think the sages would solve your problems?