Altrove/Elsewhere – Pink Passover

By Daniel Leisawitz*

The Jews of Rome have the curious custom of referring to Shavuot as “Pasqua rosa” or “Pink Passover.” It is generally thought that this epithet derives from the profusion of flowers that decorates Jewish homes and synagogues on this occasion, meant to remind us of the miraculous blossoming of flowers on Mt. Sinai and the flowery perfume that emanated from the desert mountain during the giving of the Torah according to the midrash.

Jonathan Pacifici offers another gloss on the name “Pasqua rosa” in his Discorsi sul Matan Torà (2003), in which he describes Shavuot as the “point of contact between two realities: the reality of the ‘candid white milk’ of spirituality and that of the ‘red’ of the Passover sacrifice and the circumcision of Isaac, which occurred on the seventh day of the Omer. The animal facet and the human-spiritual facet that come into contact.”

Unfortunately, we now have another association to make between Shavuot and the color pink after an ISIS-inspired terrorist shot 49 people to death and wounded dozens more in a gay nightclub in Orlando, FL early Sunday morning, the first day of Shavuot. A horrendous tragedy that tinged a usually joyous occasion with sadness and anger.

*Daniel Leisawitz, professor at Muhlenberg College (Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA). The artwork is by Abraham Cresques a 14th-century Jewish Spanish cartographer.