Changing Views of Passover and the Meaning of Redemption according to the Palestinian Talmud

Gershom Scholem points out that within Judaism the concept of redemption does not merely consist of an abstract feeling but entails a belief in a concrete physical redemption, publicly visible in this world and taking place on the stage of history and within the community. However, it projects the realization of this hope to the future, therefore making Jewish life provisional, incomplete, and unfulfilled—a “life lived in deferment.” The history of the Passover seder illustrates how both aspects of this outlook became expressed in a specific time and place. But it also indicates that the hope was not always projected into the future, for we find people who both believed in a physical redemption and at the same time tried to internalize redemption in their own lives.