Orderly disorder

״כל דחפין יצאו ויתב, כל דצריך יצאו ויאכל״
To begin, to appear, to open the night of remembering, of a memory so ancient, so exterior, a memory of the immemorial, with the hospitality of welcoming, inviting all those wandering errant, lost, and homeless, brings to mind a certain question.

If the objective hope of the night is for each subject to feel a sense of objective, albeit subjective, freedom, if each and every I needs to reach the moment, the event of echoing redemption, why open to door to the objective reality that many are still lost and enslaved?

“לשנה הבא בירושלים”
The awareness, recognition, possibly even the re/membering that we have still not arrived rumbles beneath the redemptive event of the evening. We are always on our way, wandering towards, erring towards the final destination. Even those who are there are not quite there. We are always on our way.

״כל מקום שאני הולך, אני הולך לארץ ישראל״
Rebbe Nachman said, about himself and about ourselves as well, everywhere I walk, I am walking towards Jerusalem. We are always walking towards. Backwards towards. Forward towards. Erring, crawling, mis-stepping towards.

At the Seder, the night of order, we welcome the disorder of the other, we open our doors to the notion of not-quite-being-there.

It is from within the coincidence of arrival and distance, presence and absence that we open our doors to Eliyahu. We look out longingly, un-expecting the expected guest, hoping to hear the almost forgotten call of redemption. Suddenly, פתאום, already forgotten, we catch sight of the eternally coming Eliyahu, invisible in his visibility.

It is here, כאן, in this nocturnal state of expectation, in this exilic redemption that we finally recognize, he has been here all along…
“כאן הבן שואל”