ẖSeder is celebration of passage to freedom, but it also reflects deep loss.

In his commentary to the Haggadah, Elie Wiesel writes:

Like most Jewish children, I especially loved the Passover holiday. Solemn and joyous, it allowed us to escape time. Slaves of the pharaohs, we followed Moses into the unknown... . His summons to freedom was stronger than fear.

The seder transformed us. On that evening, my father enjoyed the sovereignty of a king. My mother, lovelier than ever, was queen... . For weeks we lived in a state of expectancy, or preparation. The house had to be cleaned … Passover meant the end of winter, the triumph of spring.

Here I must interrupt my tale, for I see that I am using the past tense. Why? ... The meaning the festivals and its rituals has scarcely changed. Only I have changed. I still follow the rituals … I recite the prayers. … I tell the story of the Exodus … But in the deepest part of myself, I know it is not the same. It us not as it used to be... . 

The joyousness of the holidays so tinged with melancholy that it seems more like a time of sadness. It is understandable; Passover was the last holiday I celebrated at home. (A Passover Haggadah, 1993)

As we age, many of us personally experience this on Pesaẖ. We look at the people gathered around our table and remember who is absent. We are guests at a seder, because hosting our own would be painful. Even as we recite שהחיינו, even as we enjoy children and grandchildren, we wish that others had been kept alive, sustained and could have reached this time.

Pesah, in the midst of its celebration, reflects more than personal loss. In his Mishneh Torah, Maimonides describes what we do and what can no longer be done:

ובזמן הזה מביאין על השלחן שני מיני בשר אחד זכר לפסח ואחד זכר לחגיגה 8:1

בזמן הזה אינו אומר והלילה הזה כולו צלי שאין לנו קרבן  8:3

ובזמן הזה אומר פסח שהיו אבותינו אוכלין בזמן שבית המקדש קיים 8:4  

8:5 ובזמן הזה מוסיף כן ה' אלהינו ואלהי אבותינו  יגיענו למועדים ולרגלים אחרים הבאים לקראתנו לשלום שמחים בבנין  עירך וששים בעבודתך ונאכל שם מן הזבחים ומן הפסחים 

בזמן הזה שאין שם קרבן אחר שמברך המוציא לחם חוזרו מברך על אכילת מצה 8:8

וחוזר וכורך מצה ומרור ומטבל בחרוסת ואוכלן בלא ברכה זכר למקדש 8:8

Two types of meat should be on the seder plate—to commemorate the festival and Pesah sacrifices which can no longer be done. Four questions are to be asked—reflecting a ritually reduced reality when we lack a lamb sacrifice to initiate the evening. We must point to the zero’a—shankbone—which our ancestors ate when the Temple stood. We conclude the Maggid section with a berakhah—that calls for a time when we shall again eat the Pesaẖ sacrifices in Jerusalem. We eat matzah and maror in a Hillel sandwich—zekher l’mikdash, in memory of the Temple.

As James Diamond of Waterloo University comments, “The list is unrelenting.” In addition to celebrating liberation, we also memorialize how Jews once celebrated it. The experience of freedom is accompanied by the awareness of the loss of the Temple and the “the way we were”.

But near the end of the seder, we find a perplexing ritual that seeks to take us beyond memory and move us toward an embrace of the future. “Our Rabbis taught: [Pour] a fifth cup and complete the Hallel and recite Hallel Hagadol. This is the opinion of Rabbi Tarfon” (Pesahim 118a). In 9th century Babylonia, some Geonim sanctioned this custom, seeking to extend the joy of the evening by accompanying it with another cup of wine and additional psalms. Drinking from the fifth cup spread to Yemen, Rome, Spain, France and Germany.

The four cups were related to four verbs of redemption found in Deuteronomy: “I shall free you…and deliver you … I shall redeem you … and take you to be my people.” Once the fifth cup was introduced, Rabbi Avraham ibn Da’ud linked it to another expression of redemption: “And I shall bring you ~ והבאתיאתכם” ~ to the Land of Promise.

But not all agreed that there should be this additional fifth cup. Four questions: (1) Was this wine required, optional or forbidden? (2) Should one just pour it or also drink? (3) Was this cup to be drunk by everyone or only by the Seder leader? (4) Was this cup to be poured at the onset of Seder or late in the evening when we call for God to “pour out” Divine wrath on the enemies of Israel? James Diamond writes:

The cup sits there … disrupting the rhythm of rituals, texts, and prayers designed precisely to preserve Jewish history. It is the Seder maverick … [and a] bewildering myriad of customs prescribing what one does with this cup merely accentuate its questionable character.

Although the term seder suggests a structured order, the fifth cup, with its indeterminate nature, adds ambiguity and uncertainty to the rituals of the evening.

Modern attempts to revive the custom of drinking from the fifth cup have linked it to the contemporary return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel (Haggadah Shleimah, Menahem Kasher pp 161-177). And at our seder, each participant pours a bit of wine into the fifth cup, following a Hasidic custom that everyone must contribute a little bit to the coming of Eliyahu, who foreshadows the advent of Messianic redemption.

Because our tradition imagines Eliyahu as resolving outstanding halakhic questions before the coming of the Mashi’ah, so this fifth cup came to be associated with Eliiyahu the Prophet. For many families, the table would shake as Eliyahu came to each seder to the delight of the children.

The connection to Eliyahu shifts our attention from a longing for the by-gone era of the Temple ritual to a focus on the future. The Book of Kings recounts that when Eliyahu was about to die, Elisha would not release his spiritual teacher. Eliyahu tells him that if offers Elisha witnesses the death of his mentor, he will become an even greater prophet: if you see me as I am being taken from you, this will be granted to you; if not it will not ~ אִם־תִּרְאֶ֨ה אֹתִ֜י לֻקָּ֤ח מֵֽאִתָּךְ֙ יְהִֽי־לְךָ֣ כֵ֔ן וְאִם־אַ֖יִן לֹ֥א יִהְיֶֽה׃ (II Kings 2:10).

Elisha must accept the end of his teacher’s life and the inability of continuing the way things were. Diamond writes: “By conditioning Elisha’s future on the capacity to observe his own departure from the scene, Elijah teaches a valuable lesson—that continuity with the past must also be balanced by a sober acknowledgment of its passage.” When Eliyahu dies, Elisha offers a one-sentence eulogy:Oh father, father! Israel’s chariots and horsemen ~~ ~ ~ אָבִ֣י אָבִ֗י רֶ֤כֶב יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ וּפָ֣רָשָׁ֔יו. ~ Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his garment and tore it in two. Elisha grieves, even as he has been released to shape his own destiny.

You may recall the Bnei B’rak boys in the ‘hood—“It happened once [on Pesaẖ] that Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Tarfon … were telling the story of the exodus from Egypt that whole night, until their students came and said to them, ‘The time of [reciting] the morning Shema has arrived’.” Their intense attention to the past makes them unable to notice what is happening at the moment, the dawn of a new day. Their students shake them and demand that they deal with the demands of the present. Sometime we are so stuck in our grief, we are unable to face the tasks at hand.

Eliyahu, who symbolises historical transformation and redemption, shakes up the table at the time of the fifth cup. Can we remember the past, our traditions and the people who meant so much tous, in a way that honours what was, enables us to experience the present and continue into the future.

Just prior to Pesah, on Shabbat Hagadol, the prophet Malakhi tells us that Eliyahu willturn the hearts of parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents ~ וְהֵשִׁ֤יבלֵב־אָבוֹת֙עַל־בָּנִ֔יםוְלֵ֥בבָּנִ֖יםעַל־אֲבוֹתָ֑ם(Malachi 3:24). The prophet reminds children that they cannot be their parents and teaches parents that they cannot expect children to be their clones. Still, they can still be attuned and turned toward one another.

The fifth verb of redemption, symbolised by the fifth cup, tells us of two gifts:I will bring you to the land, which I promised to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for a heritage: I am the Eternal(Exodus 6:8). There is a gift to the ancestors and a gift to the descendants.

Parents and older generations leave behind a legacy. Children may passively continue what was given to them. Children may also generate another gift by building a future on the past. As I contemplate the conclusion of my service at Beth Tzedec, my hope is that you will take the many meaningful traditions and initiatives of my years here and build on them with whomever will become your rabbi. The future erawill not sprout if its flowering depends on one generation replicating another. Eliyahu seeks to turn the generations toward each other by cautioning them that love does not entail imitation.

Prof. Diamond points out that Maimonides concludes the section of Mishneh Torah governing theSederwith a “curious case” concerning venue. Going against the halakhic mandate to do everything at the table where the Seder was staged, he indicates that the fifth cup, the conclusion of the Seder with its final words,  may occur “in any place one wants, even if it is not in the same place as the meal”

 ויש לו למזוג כוס חמישי ולומר עליו הלל הגדול מהודו לה'  כ יטוב עד על נהרות בבל. וכוס זה אינו חובה כמו ארבעה כוסות.  ויש לו לגמור את ההלל בכל מקום שירצה אע"פ שאינו מקום סעודה.(Mishneh Torah, Laws of Hametz and Matzah 8:10).

Along with the clearly delineated protocol of the Seder, Maimonides allows for personal variation and creativity. Participants are invited to move out of the confines of the past and follow the possibilities of Eliyahu’s cup. The fifth cup follows all the acts of memory with the capacity to move into the future.

As we remember our losses today, let us take Eliyahu’s message to heart. Honour what was in our families. Remember what we have been given as a legacy. And build on that heritage so that the gift from the past may become a constructive and creative future that we, in turn, can pass on to our descendants.

https://www.thelehrhaus.com/timely-thoughts/elijahs-elusive-cup-and-the-challenge-of-memory/

http://www.cjnews.com/perspectives/opinions/fifth-cup-future

https://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/93592/jewish/Pesach.htm