My Passover plans ran into a few hitches this year. As everybody who knows anything about me knows, I have been preparing for Korban Pesah for some time. In previous years, I hoped and prayed that we would be allowed to have our Passover service, and early in the afternoon of the fourteenth of Nisan I would check the news often and wait for that phone call telling me that the sacrifice was on, at which point I would take my pre-packed suitcases and hightail it with the family for Jerusalem. However, because the fourteenth of Nisan was the Sabbath this year, and intercity travel is prohibited by Torah law thereon, I had to make sure to be in Jerusalem before the Sabbath. Then again, as I was telling anyone who would listen for the last year, YOU also had to make sure to be in Jerusalem before the Sabbath, or else YOU would not have been able to eat of the Korban Pesah. I am astounded by the sheer multitudes of people who did not make suitable arrangements.
Whatever the case, we were in Jerusalem early the afternoon of Friday, and then, on the morning of the Sabbath, because one who is ritually impure is not allowed to consume sacrificial meat, I dutifully immersed myself in a local miqweh shortly after the morning prayers, before I consumed my second-Sabbath and final-leaven meal. Then, after some relaxing/stressful quality time with the kids, I put on my finest clothes and began my 45 minute trek to (what now, due to our neglect, only remains of) the Temple. I told my wife that our sacrificial animal would remain on the Temple Mount that afternoon with whomever was in charge of our group, while I would return sometime later that afternoon. Because it is strictly forbidden to prepare in any way for the night of Yom Tov on the Sabbath, we would then sit tight at our place of lodging until the Sabbath ended, at which point we would gather the kids and begin the march, as a family, back to the Old City to have our seder. The initial walk was pleasant enough, but as I began my final decent from the Jewish Quarter’s parking lot to the area of the Kotel Plaza, I met another Jewish man and his family, and in response to my query, he said that the sacrifice had not been offered. Because it was still fairly early in the afternoon, I proceeded, and presented myself to the lone guard stationed at the entrance of the Temple Mount, and requested to be admitted so that I could view the slaughter of the Pesah. The guard, with out flinching, asked to see my goat, to which I answered that I was but one member of a larger group, and that the Rabbi was in charge of bringing our animal, and I was still unaware if it was to be a goat or a lamb. Struck by the readiness of that answer, he countered that the Mount was to remain closed, but as the aforementioned Jewish man I had encountered had also told me, the Mount would be open the next morning at 7am. That was all well and good, but the time for Korban Pesah is only the afternoon of the fourteenth.
Dejected, I prepared for the afternoon prayers (at least they don’t stop us from doing that) at the Kotel (not because it is any better than any other Old-City synagogue but because that’s where I could find a convenient minyan), and went home to disappoint the family by announcing that we would be staying put and having a b’diavad seder once again this year, and Haggadat Hapesah would have to wait for the next year.
But that was not the first hitch.
From Rabbi Avi Grossman, here.