Passover

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You must eat unleavened bread for seven days. On the first day you must remove yeast from your houses. Whoever eats what is leavened from the first day through the seventh day must be cut off from Israel. You are to hold a sacred assembly on the first day and another sacred assembly on the seventh day.
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Exodus 12:15-16


I am not interested in legalism, I am only interested in principles that make sense.  Of all holidays, Passover makes the most sense to me as a celebration of freedom.  This is not just like a national independence day, but is fundamentally about escaping slavery to achieve freedom.

The first rule of the Passover celebration is to refrain from eating bread.  Superficially this is a reminder that the Israelites did not have time to let their bread rise before leaving Egypt.  But I think it is deeper than this.  Bread is the ultimate comfort food.  It is a cheap food given to slaves, prisoners, and the masses.  The Roman Juvenal used the phrase "bread and circuses" to describe appeasing the Roman masses.  People who want freedom must be willing to give up cheap comforts to fight for freedom.  And bread represents this kind of cheap comfort.  So by not eating bread for a week, you are reminding yourself that you value freedom over comfort.  By not eating bread, you are rejecting the slave mentality expressed by the Israelites during their exodus:

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The people spoke against God and Moses: “Why have you led us up from Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread or water, and we detest this wretched food!”
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Numbers 21:5

Instead you are agreeing with Benjamin Franklin who said:

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Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
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There is also a second rule of Passover that is completely neglected today.  This is to hold a sacred assembly.  Yet this rule is mentioned in every description of Passover in the Torah (Exodus 12, Leviticus 23, Numbers 28, and Deuteronomy 16).  So this rule is no less important than the first rule.

On a practical level, it makes sense to bring the people of Israel together for the sake of fostering unity.  Yet there is also a connection to Exodus story.  In Exodus, Moses repeatedly asked Pharaoh for permission for the Israelites to gather at a mountain to worship God.  On the one hand, this was an obvious ploy where Moses was lying to Pharaoh and had no intention of returning to Egypt if allowed to go.  But on the other hand, this is a good illustration of what it means to be a slave.  Being a slave means that one cannot just organize an assembly because one has to get one's master's permission to leave for such an assembly.  So in a real sense, being able to attend an assembly is an expression of freedom.  This principle still applies today.  Being an employee is little better than being a slave, and employees have to beg their bosses for permission to take time off.  The Israelites who left Egypt became shepherds and farmers, with far more freedom than today's employees have.  So applying the second rule of passover is rejecting all forms of slavery, including employment, and demanding that people prove their freedom by being able to attend a yearly assembly that is specifically a celebration of freedom.

Because I find Passover so inspiring, I would like to propose that we add keeping the Passover as a fifth Mikraite rule.  It would serve a number of practical benefits for us.  A yearly Passover assembly/gathering would guarantee that we all meet at least once a year.  This also serves as a way to weed out inactive members since failing to attend without good reason should result in the person being cut off from Mikraite.  The Torah rule says to gather on the first and seventh day, but being practical, we can change this to simply gathering on the Saturday of Passover.

The exact dates of Passover don't matter much, so we can just use the Jewish dates.  But the rabbis, in their never-ending quest to distort the Torah, have extended Passover to 8 days.  We can just ignore the 8th day.  I would go further and encourage all Jewish Mikraites to eat bread on the 8th day as a celebration of freedom from the rabbis.

We can discuss this at our next meeting.

I like the idea, but bread doesn't strike me as a cheap comfort today. I can easily go without it and some weeks I do. Some people don't eat bread at all in their diet. I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile considering something else as a restriction?

Maybe anything with sugar? This would be more of a "comfort food" for most people, and avoiding it also has health benefits.