A Sweet and Kosher Pesach Rabbi Alan W. Bright So here we are once again with Passover 2023 well on
holiday, or it’s a way to compensate for an otherwise
the horizon. As we get ready for Pesach, after we’re
lack of observance.
done with all our preparations, as in years past, it is customary to wish each other a “Zissen and Kosher Pesach,” a sweet and kosher Pesach. Did you ever wonder why we use such a greeting? Sure, we dip an apple in honey on Rosh Hashanah and wish each other a sweet New Year. But a sweet Pesach? What makes Pesach sweet? It certainly couldn’t be the maror! Who knows? Maybe the phrase was invented by Manischewitz as a way of promoting its sweet wines.
this term. One that gets to the heart of the holiday, whether one is observant or not. As we know, Pesach involves much hard work. The cleaning, the cooking, the preparations, everything down to the smallest detail. And then we have the Seders and Yom Tov and a whole week of eating differently. It takes a lot out of us. We might look at it as drudgery. But when we are finished with the cooking and the cleaning, when the Seders are over, don’t we look back and
Harvard University professor of Jewish and Yiddish
realize how worthwhile and enjoyable it was? Don’t
literature Ruth Wisse was asked this question and
we look back and savour the experience? Of course,
responded: “In my experience, the adjective zis
we do. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
was usually reserved for Rosh Hashanah, as in the expression a zis yor, ‘A sweet year.’ The most familiar Yiddish Passover greeting is a kosher Pesach, while a freylakhn Pesach is also something I’ve heard most of my life. But who knows? Maybe the greetings for one holiday passed into another.”
And so, by wishing someone a “Zissen Pesach”, we are saying, in advance, that all the hard work will be worth it. We will enjoy the special foods and being with family and friends at the Seder. It will be a sweet time. And just like the Israelites of old went through years of slavery before they experienced the sweet
Another explanation I’ve heard is that over the
taste of freedom, we too know that Pesach will also
years, as traditional observance has waned, wishing
be a memorable and sweet time in our lives.
someone a “Kosher” Pesach when they don’t keep kosher seems hypocritical or insincere. Therefore, a new, more modern, more neutral greeting was added. Hence a “Zissen Pesach.” So now we have three theories for the origin of this term. It either originated as advertising copy, it could have been a spontaneous transference from another
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But I’d like to offer another reason for the use of
Therefore, from Elizabeth, me and the children, may you have a happy, kosher, and, most of all, a Zissen Pesach.
