PASSOVER EDITION 5783 SECTION C PAGE 23
It feels ironic. With the impending Passover just days away, with Passover preparation and spirit in the air — the holiday whose motif is redemption and whose story is the inception of our people — so much disunity fills the air.
It is painfully ironic, painfully dissonant, to experience the foundational collective memory of unity as so fractured on the streets of Israel.
The exodus of our enslaved people from Egypt to freedom has become the paradigm freedom story for the world. Black slaves drew inspiration from the story of Moses who freed the Israelites from Egypt.
This is the story about change being possible. The story of optimism even when all seems lost. The story of tenacity. Of miracles. Of G-d and the Jewish people, of good and light prevailing over evil and darkness. It’s the story of hope, whether for national independence or personal freedom from oppression. Belief in the possibility of freedom from the shackles that bind us is rooted in Passover.
Throughout the millennia, we have never forgotten this. We have never forgotten our roots. How, from an enslaved people, we rose to receive the Torah, trek through the desert and finally reach the promised land.
The seder is the most celebrated of Jewish holidays and rituals.
Families gather and retell our story of release from enslavement to freedom.
It is the story of our inception as a people that is the greater unifier, transcending anything else that might divide us.
Yet, even then, it was never a story of cohesion. The people were never monolithic.
We were formed from 12 tribes. Our DNA as a people is a diverse one, made up of 12 differing and at times competing streams.
In fact, on some level, that is what got us into the Egyptian exile in the first place. The broken brotherhood between Joseph and his brothers resulted in Joseph’s sale and descent to Egypt. That rupture was the catalyst for the excruciating exile, the hundreds of years of suffering that nearly obliterated us.
By definition, the narrative of redemption implies a prior time of near total destruction.
While on a spiritual level we never can know, we shall never know, how a Holocaust was allowed to happen — its mysteries are in the realm of the infinite — we do know that it was a moment of, yet again, near total destruction.
We cannot necessarily link the Holocaust to our ancient-yet-modern state of Israel as cause-and-effect, but the juxtaposition is not lost on us either.
The formation of the modern day Israel, while it is our ancient homeland, and while there was a continuous presence of Jews there since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70CE, and while Jews actively worked on reclaiming land already since the 1880s, Israel was ultimately our modern day redemption of sorts, after the ashes of the Holocaust.
This dawn of a new day in our history, this emergence of our own sovereign government, after we were battered and broken, was nothing short of miraculous.
Even if not literally, it is as close as we have come to rebuilding our Third Temple, which in Hebrew is not actually called a “temple” but a “home.” A bayit. A home for the Jewish people.
While in religious circles, some believe this precious state of Israel is the first step toward a more complete redemption, and others don’t believe this, at the end of the day it’s all we’ve got for now. At the end of the day, we are so blessed to be the generation that has Israel. At the end of the day, regardless of our particular beliefs, all of us are ultimately in the same boat as Jews. We have a common destiny and mission in the one sliver of land we can call our own.
It is our job to guard it. It’s our job never to repeat the rupture between the brothers that the tribes and Joseph lived through, triggering tragedy for generations to come.
In Egypt, how terrifying must it have been for the Israelites to faithfully follow the word of Moses, to cross a Reed Sea. If the initial phase of redemption is miraculous, then comes our role in sustaining the redemption by learning to redeem ourselves.
I was moved to tears when I saw a video of an elderly Jew who last Thursday night, the Sabbath eve, had come to the city of Bnei Brak with the intention to protest, but instead broke down in tears when he suddenly, for the first time since his boyhood, found himself hearing the traditional Friday night Sabbath melody of “Shalom Aleichem” — Peace be unto you — blaring over an urban musical sound system permeating the city. This man’s unprepardeness for this piece of Judaism to rear its unexpected head, followed by his genuine outpouring of childlike emotion soaking his wrinkled face, was so very deeply touching.
Each of us has so many layers we build around ourselves; if only we peel them away, perhaps we would see one another differently, or at least be able to sing Shalom Aleichem together.
This Passover season of redemption, as we painfully witness our fellow Jews in Israel undergoing such turbulence — such a chasm among our people — let us try to find ways to redeem ourselves. To shrink the chasm, or at least to find our way back to our common language as brothers, to heal the rifts and the divisions. To learn to listen to one another — to learn to sing Ma Nishtana again together — and thus take part in creating our own continued redemption.
Joseph found a way to do it.
So can we.
On this Passover, may we merit to redeem ourselves within the gift that G-d and history has granted us.
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