Pesach Sheni Essays

The "Second Passover" marks the day when someone who was unable to participate in the Passover offering in the proper time would observe the mitzvah exactly one month later.

If someone was unable to participate in the Passover offering at the proper time, they would offer the sacrifice a month later.

Discover the historical and mystical reason why this is the only holiday observance that can be made up one month later.

The Paschal lamb was consumed on the evening of Iyar 15, but the custom is to eat matzah on Iyar 14. Why?

No one is ever too lost to make amends in their lives. When we stray or mess up, if we recognize how far gone we are and we are shaken to our core, we can rebound.

We all appreciate a statement like “There’s always a second chance.” It fits quite nicely on the December 31 page of an Inspirational Sayings Calendar. But how does it mesh with real life?

The “Second Passover” is observed on the fourteenth of Iyar. The origin of this semi-holiday is quite fascinating . . .

When a person’s contact with death evokes in him a striving for life he would never have mustered without that experience, then the contact with death is transformed into a more intense involvement with life.

A group of Jews had found themselves in a state which, by divine decree, absolved them from the duty to bring the Passover offering. Yet they refused to reconcile themselves to this.

There are many differences between the observance of the First and Second Passovers. Is there one common thread which can explain all these differences?

Nowadays we commemorate the Second Passover by making sure to indulge in some matzah, but simultaneously we are permitted bread and other chametz on the table.

G-d never promised that we won’t fall off, but He will help us climb back on again.

It doesn’t matter how old we are, how lost we’ve been or where we are holding in our lives today. We beg Him to give us a second chance, and He obliges.

Some might think it odd when they hear an alcoholic in recovery say something like “Being an alcoholic is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”

You can be physically close, yet detached and distant in attitude—here in body, elsewhere in mind.