There are numerous points of entry, including the haftarah for this week, which points to the interrelationship between Passover itself and Shabbat Hagadol. Without making a case for precedents and influences, let us note that this haftarah (Malachi 3:4–24) concludes with an explicit reference to Elijah (vv. 23–24): “Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the LORD. He shall reconcile parents with children and children with their parents…” Now, I think that reconciling parents and children is a wonderful task, but that is a subject we shall leave for another day. In rabbinic interpretation, one of Elijah’s responsibilities was held to be in reconciling halachic disputes that occurred in antiquity and concerning which no resolution was ever recorded. It is one such unresolved dispute that provides us with a wonderful point of entry for Elijah into our Passover experience and his mysterious cup of wine

Some modern scholars have taken a kind of anthropological approach to note Elijah’s presence in our liturgies at particular “liminal moments.”[i]  Taken from the Latin limen, or “threshold,” the term was developed by 19th and early 20th century anthropologists, such as Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, to refer to rites of passage or moments of transition that were felt to be dangerous. Jewish liturgies created for such moments thus invoked Elijah as a kind of “heavenly protector” to help the participant transition from the “before” to the “after.” A brit milah is one such type of moment (potential danger to the newborn son); Motzei Shabbat is another one (one Jewish belief holds that God takes away at the end of Shabbat, the “second soul” with which God has endowed us at the onset of Shabbat, and the fear is that God will accidentally take away our primary soul, as well).

In this context we must recognize that Passover was often an especially dangerous time for Jews. It takes place during the same season as the one in which Christians mark the crucifixion and was therefore also a time at which—until quite recently— that Christian tradition charged ancient Jews. Christians would take out the responsibility for this upon contemporary Jews living in their midst. Pogroms would often break out during Passover/Christian Holy Week. And so, during the seder, when Jews would go see if Christians were in the vicinity, they invoked Elijah as a protector at that time, as well. Some liturgies incorporate the singing of Eliyahu ha-Navi at this time; others incorporate the tradition of reciting verses such as שְׁפֹךְ חֲמָתְךָ אֶל הַגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר לֹא יְדָעוּךָ וְעַל מַמְלָכוֹת אֲשֶׁר בְּשִׁמְךָ לֹא קָרָאוּ, “Pour out Your fury on the nations that do not know You, upon the kingdoms that do not invoke Your name” (Psalm 79:6), which is thus to be understood as what might be recited “when the coast was clear.”

Returning to idea of Elijah as a mediator, we need to look at a central passage concerning God’s promises to the Israelite nation while it was still suffering under Egyptian bondage:

Say, therefore, to the Israelite people: I am the LORD. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I, the LORD, am your God who freed you from the labors of the Egyptians (Exodus 6:6-7).

In various midrashim (e.g., Talmud Yerushalmi Pesahim 10:1), the sages consider this passage to be the passage of the arba leshonot ge’ulah, “four expressions of redemption,” because it was felt that by means of the four verbs contained in this passage, God had promised redemption Israel four times. Now, you may recall that the Mishnah (Pesahim 10:1) ruled that a person should drink no fewer than four cups of wine during the seder (וְלֹא יִפְחֲתוּ לוֹ מֵאַרְבַּע כּוֹסוֹת שֶׁל יַיִן). Moreover, according to some authorities, this requirement was based on the arba leshonot ge’ulah passage from the Book of Exodus. However, other Sages pointed to the verse that immediately follows this passage (Exodus 6:8) and which contains an additional “expression of redemption,” והבאתי: “I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession, I the LORD.” According to the logic of these sages, even though God has not yet brought the entire Jewish people into the Land, none should drink fewer than FIVE cups of wine at the seder to commemorate what were, in effect, not four but five expressions of redemption!

Now, if one thinks about a dispute such as this one, with one rabbinic position holding that one should drink no fewer than four cups, and the other position holding that one should drink no fewer than five cups, one can see that, despite the dispute, both sides agree that four cups should be drunk. And that becomes the halacha: we drink four cups of wine—and pour the fifth, but do not drink. And that fifth cup becomes the “Cup of Elijah,” not because Elijah comes to each celebrating Jewish home and drinks some wine from “his” cup, but because of the role the figure of Elijah plays, according to rabbinic lore, when two groups of opposing rabbis cannot agree on what the halacha is, but know they must establish a rule to follow. And that role is established by a midrash on the verse from Malachi that we read as part of the haftorah for Shabbat Hagadol, and that I cited earlier: “Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the LORD.  He shall reconcile parents with children and children with their parents…” (Mal. 3:23–24). In this sense, the reconciliation that Elijah is to bring about is not between literal family members, but members of the broader rabbinic family. Moreover, even the Aramaic word that is found in the Talmud to mark such irreconcilable disputes ( תיקו literally, “let it—the dispute—stand”) was taken to be an acronym for Malachi’s promise of a deliverance that would be heralded by the Prophet Elijah: תשבי יתרץ קושיות ובעיות tishbi yitaretz qushiyot u-va’ayot, “Elijah will resolve difficulties and problems.”

And now that we have traced the route through which Elijah visits our seder, I will close this essay not with additional analysis, but with a prayer: May we soon come to live in a world that merits Elijah’s arrival, a world that is marked not by strife but by amity. And may we welcome Elijah into our seder both with honest and ritualized memory of terrible experiences the Jewish people have endured, but also with the hope that one day—soon, we hope!—we may experience peace and reconciliation.

[i] See Lawrence A. Hoffman, Beyond the Text: a Holistic Approach to Liturgy (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 20–45 (for the role of Elijah, see pp. 24–27; on liminality, see pp. 42–43).

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

The Temple was a center of holiness and purity, and the altar was, within that larger precinct, the very epicenter of purity. No part of a sacrificial animal that had become ritually impure was permitted to approach the altar, and certainly not to be offered in the sacrificial fire that burned there. The impurity could have arisen by a dead insect having fallen on the animal’s carcass after the slaughter; or a host of other conditions might have arisen, any one of which would have created a certain revulsion to the guardians of the sacred precincts. We cannot today reconstruct precisely why impurity and revulsion were said to arise from particular things in ancient times, but there were such deep aversions. 

Now comes the principle given in the mishnah I referenced earlier: “Hamizbeah mekadesh et hara’ui lo,” “the altar sanctifies every thing that is fitting for it.” The Sages took the repetition of the word that means “going up” to signal that there are things that ought never to have been taken up the ramp to the Temple altar, but once having been brought there, should not be removed. Although they would normally be disqualified from the altar because of some blemish on their sanctity or purity, having reached the altar, by happenstance, the altar itself overrides both the impurity itself, and the revulsion that impurity would generate. The impure flesh that was an affront to the altar from afar, having touched the altar, now became fit, and could be treated and handled like any other object whose purity was uncompromised.

The principle here is by turns counterintuitive and intriguing. Counterintuitive, because how could impurity ever be allowed to coexist with the very center of purity, even if the juxtaposition arose unintentionally? Shouldn’t something profane and impure immediately be removed from the epicenter of sanctity? But it is intriguing at the same time because there is something fascinating and alluring about the idea that there are places, things, perhaps phenomena, that are so suffused with the force of holiness that they can completely eclipse and overwhelm even those things that stand in opposition to it. We are taught, for example, that a mikveh—a ritual pool that is used to return to a state of purity—can itself never become impure or polluted. No matter what may fall into it, its purity is unchanged. The Torah itself has that property. Contrary to centuries-long misogynist misreadings that were calculated to keep women away from the Torah, there is nothing that can impart impurity to a scroll of the Torah.

So it’s at least a curious twist in the annals of ancient Temple and priestly rules. But for us, today, is it harmless?

Are there things that are so sacred, that are of such ultimate importance, that they serve as solvents to dissolve all flaws that come into contact with them? Are there contemporary sancta that can and should have the power to wash away all manner of stains that we would normally treat with the same revulsion and disgust with which our ancient priests treated their sources of impurity?

In particular, I have in mind a matter of serious concern regarding discourse within the Jewish community today. Does a profession of love and support of the Jewish people and the Jewish state, and a determination to identify and defeat antisemitism, have the power to sanctify and cleanse the impurities of rank incivility and malicious slander? The latter are rightly reviled, and no one would think of raising them up to the altar, as it were. They are as unwelcome and as noxious as hametz is on the upcoming festival of Pesah. Were such incivility and slander to be practiced by foes of the Jewish people, we would rightly take such offensive character traits as being of a piece with hostility to Jews and Israel. But what shall we say and do when the very people who profess to love us and have our best interests at heart—our own Jewish confrères—display the very same defiling traits towards their fellow Jews of different opinions? Should that not at least cast some serious doubt on whether they truly get who we are and what our mission and cause is? Should we allow ourselves to get pushed to the point at which expressions of love of the Jewish people and the Jewish state become like the ancient altar, dissolving and washing away all sins and impurities? Even observant, practicing Jews can be targets of incivility and slander when they raise concerns about the policies and practices of Israeli governments.  The same happens to Jews who, while deploring antisemitism, do not see it in all the places at which they are told they should see it. Often they are demonized, tagged as wolves in sheep’s clothing, and as enemies of the Jewish people. There is far too much contempt for those of other opinions.

We all, under normal circumstances, reject vulgarity, contempt, and slander. Yet some may maintain that the Rabbis in Zevahim were on to something; that in our day the dangers we all agree that Israel and the Jewish people face should have the power that the ancient altar had and should dissolve the impurities of language and deed that we would normally reject in normal times. But there is a word in the Rabbis’ mishnah to which we have not paid much attention until now.  “The altar sanctifies everything that is fitting for it.” What does “fitting” mean in that context? If the flesh of a sacrificial lamb were made impure, then its having reached the altar would sanctify it nonetheless, because lamb flesh is fitting for the altar. But not so for the flesh of something unfit for sacrifice. The flesh of a deer, and certainly that of a swine, does not get sanctified by the altar; only that which is minimally fitting for the sacred place to begin with does.

So which is it? Should the incivility, slander, and even vulgarity that too often gets directed at honest and conscientious questioners of mainstream assumptions be overlooked when wielded in a professed solidarity with Israel, or concern for antisemitism? Or are they so unfitting, so incongruous to who we are and what our values are, that our contemporary holy of holies cannot cleanse them? 

I end with these questions. We will all answer them as we will. But we cannot avoid conscientiously grappling with them.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

שׁוֹאֲלִין וְדוֹרְשִׁין בְּהִלְכוֹת הַפֶּסַח קוֹדֶם הַפֶּסַח שְׁלֹשִׁים יוֹם

“One should ask questions and expound upon the laws of Passover thirty days prior to Passover.”

“It is known as Shabbat Hagadol, because on the Shabbat before Pesah the congregation would sit for a long time listening to the teaching of the rabbi. And the rabbi’s teaching covered many topics: the laws of hametz and matzah, rules of Pesah and yom tov, items related to the Exodus from Egypt, etc., and the congregation would not depart for their homes until the teaching was over. And the day is seen in the eyes of the congregation as larger and longer than other days, hence it is called ‘The Great Sabbath.’” [1]

Shibbolei Haleket, Zedekiah ben Abraham Anav (13th-Century Italy)

I know it is difficult to imagine, but the tradition throughout the communities of Europe was that the rabbi would stand up on the bimah to give a formal sermon only twice a year: on Shabbat Shuvah (between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), and on Shabbat Hagadol, the Shabbat preceding Passover. That’s it. No weekly sermon, no d’var Torah for the e-newsletter; only twice a year, to teach, and often at great length, on the laws of repentance and the laws of Passover respectively.[2]

These two moments in time, situated at opposite poles of the Jewish calendar—one focused on individual salvation, the other focused on national redemption—served as the perfect platform for a rabbi to stand before the community and offer a teaching meant to elevate the experience of not just the Sabbath, but the holiday that follows it as well. 

So you can imagine the shock when the rabbi of Berlin, Rabbi Tzvi Halberstam, decided one year not to give the derashah on Shabbat Hagadol. When his congregation approached him and asked him why he would not speak, he said: “The matter of this derashah is referenced in the Talmud, where it says: ‘One should ask questions and expound upon the laws of Passover thirty days prior to Passover.’ First the congregation must ask the questions; only then does the rabbi know how to answer them; and as of today, no one has asked me a single question about Pesah!”

The truth is, of all the Jewish holidays of the year, Pesah requires the most forethought, the most planning, the most cleaning, and yes, the most questions! Jewish tradition understands deeply that ritual does not simply “occur;” it is instead the result of painstaking preparation and beginning with the end in mind.

There are three types of questions I believe we should ask as part of our planning for the holiday: the logistical, the pedagogical, and the communal.

The Logistical:

The first reason we must ask and answer questions thirty days prior to the holiday is that the primary experience of the holiday, the Seder, usually takes place in the home, and not in the synagogue. Each household is responsible for creating a Seder meal, and that involves a lot of questions! Which areas of the home require cleaning and which ones do not? What is kosher this year and what is not? What’s the rule about unopened tuna fish and orange juice? (Always remember to download this year’s copy of the !)

Other questions that need asking (and answering) long before the holiday begins are: Who’s hosting this year? Who are we inviting? What’s on the menu? And where’s that shopping list we left for ourselves last year?

The Pedagogical:

Rabbi Moshe Isserles writes, regarding Shabbat Hagadol, “It is a tradition to read the Haggadah at Minhah . . .”(Gloss to Shulhan Arukh 430:1)

With the focus of the holiday being on the home, each Seder leader becomes the rabbi of their home, so to speak, and therefore needs to develop a “lesson plan” for how to create a meaningful experience for all involved. First, we must review the material of the Haggadah once again. What parts of it are familiar to us, overflowing with tunes and memories of sedarim past? What parts of it need review, practice, learning, commentary?

Other pedagogical questions we must ask ourselves prior to the holiday include: Which Haggadot will we be using this year? Who’s leading the Four Questions? How will we make this Seder welcoming to non-Jews with whom we share our joy? Where is there slavery today and what is our responsibility to eradicate it? Where are the lurking dangers to our values and traditions that “in each and every generation” seek to challenge our way of life?

The Communal:

Although much of the emphasis of Passover is on the individual and the household, we risk missing the entire essence of the holiday if we focus only on our home, on the table setting, or on the menu.

Isserles writes, “It is a tradition to buy wheat to distribute to the poor for their Passover needs. Everyone who has lived in the city for twelve months must contribute.” (Gloss to Shulhan Arukh 429:1)

Here Rabbi Isserles teaches us that an important part of our Passover preparations must be ensuring that the community in which we live has the resources to support every individual’s ability to fulfill the commandments of the holiday. As we learn in Mishnah Pesahim 10:1:

“Even the poor among [the people] Israel should not eat without reclining. And they must be given no fewer than four cups of wine, even [if they are sustained] from the charity plate.”

These are our questions, our way of preparing for the holiday that is approaching, for our Jewish world, for our communities, and in our homes. By asking questions as to “how” we create the rituals of Passover, we are actually answering the question of the impertinent “wicked child” when they ask, “What is this ritual to you?”[3] The answer is: “Look at all that we do for the sake of this holiday; it isbecause it means everything to us.”

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

[1] In a , Rabbi David Golinkin suggests it is highly unlikely that this is the etymology for Shabbat Hagadol.

[2] The tradition of giving sermons on Shabbat dates to antiquity. However, it was typically delivered by a community’s darshan or an itinerant preacher.

[3] Exodus 12:26

The seder is meant to spark discussion of these issues, and thousands of Haggadot reflect the varied ways that communities have interpreted this directive over time, space, and interests. The Haggadot in my childhood home included several additional, mimeographed pages to remember those who perished in the Holocaust and express solidarity with a new generation of Soviet Jews yearning for liberation. Throughout my adulthood, new additions found their way into our seder.  Our understanding of freedom and liberation, so essential to the Pesah seder, was enriched and enlarged not only by using various Haggadot and topical inserts, but also by learning from seder guests who experienced the sweetness and joy of freedom viscerally—a formerly incarcerated person, a family who had escaped the shah of Iran, a victim of childhood abuse, and a colleague whose scholarship focused on the enslavement of African Americans in our own country. In each generation, we discover new ways to understand and personalize our ancient teachings.

As we approach Passover this year, our focus includes Ukrainians fighting valiantly to defend themselves against Russian invasion. Outraged by the violence, heartbroken by the loss of life, and appalled by the destruction, we feel an obligation to help the Ukrainian people by offering monetary support and help with resettlement. And we are especially attuned to helping the tens of thousands of Jews among them.

Exactly one hundred years ago, in April 1922, my great-grandparents emigrated to the United States with their four children, fearing for their lives in Kremenets, a city located in what is now present-day western Ukraine. My great-grandfather, Aaron Shimon Shpall, an educator and journalist, recorded his thoughts about leaving “the city that we were born in and that we spent years of our lives in,” acknowledging how hard it would be “to separate from our native land, and our birthplace and our father’s house.” But he was clear that the homeland he knew – which was part of Russia – had “embittered our lives and saddened our souls. If not for the three million of our brothers who live there, it could be overturned along with Sodom and Gomorrah and the world would have lost nothing.”

My family succeeded in leaving because in the aftermath of World War I, the western part of Russia—including Kremenets—became part of the newly created modern Poland. Shpall’s brother and sisters, who had left previously and settled in Denver, Colorado, sent him the necessary travel expenses and affidavits, and Shpall and his family received Polish passports on June 21, 1921. Even after this date, it took months for them to leave. The situation worsened, and Shpall was arrested. He was eventually released, but when a local officer tipped him off to an impending second arrest—from which he would likely never return—the family resolved to leave. By this time the visa needed to be ratified again by the American Consul in Poland. In requesting ratification, Shpall provided the requisite reassurances: “I am going to Colorado, a province not populated very much, and my settlement there will have no bad influence upon the material life of the inhabitants,” given his level of education and his experience as an educator.

The anguish of my family’s departure and, I can only imagine the feelings of refugees all over the world in every era, is captured in Shpall’s diary: “Nobody desired to go, but everybody had to go. We all run, or, to speak more correctly, we flee. And when somebody flees, there is no question: ‘Where to?’  Where your feet carry you! Where you have the possibility!”

After being reunited with his family in Colorado, Shpall and his family ultimately settled in New Orleans, where he served as teacher and then as assistant principal of the communal Hebrew school.

American Jewry has flourished thanks to ancestors like Shpall.  Owing to their courage and determination, we are privileged to recount the Exodus from Egypt each year as citizens of a democratic state and to develop the empathy needed at moments like this to help others who fear for their lives.

For some, historical empathy for the plight of the Ukrainian people might be tinged with ambivalence, because of ancestors—like Shpall—who suffered from brutal antisemitism at the hands of Ukrainian neighbors or whose ancestors’ murder at the hand of the Nazis was abetted by local Ukrainians. How can we square these complicated emotions? In part, because we also know that countless other Ukrainians fought in the Russian army to defeat the Nazis; and, Ukraine has changed greatly over time. The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, on the site of the largest massacre of Ukrainian Jews by the Nazis, is in the planning stages, and today, Ukraine is led by a Jewish president.

Most important, we quell our doubts because the Haggadah reminds us not to take our freedom for granted, pointing us instead to activate our sense of moral responsibility to help others who are fighting to secure their own. Our Haggadah prods us to recall our history so that it will conjure up our best selves, so that we will do what we can to ensure that the future brings freedom, safety, and security to all. It’s a sentiment I believe my great-grandfather would have shared. 

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

As we approach Pesah 2021, these contradictory emotions leave us teetering on a precipice, not sure whether to grieve or celebrate, fear or hope. Such contradictions are central to our celebration of the holiday itself. On the same seder plate, even in the same bite, we juxtapose the bitter and the sweet, the maror and the haroset.

The four different names of Pesah highlight these complicated feelings. Hag Hapesah and Hag Hamatzot both connect to the Israelites’ life in Egypt. Hag Hapesah reminds us of the miracle of the tenth plague, when God passed over the houses of the Israelites who had marked their doorposts with the blood of the Paschal sacrifice. This name vividly depicts how precariously the Israelites found themselves, poised between destruction and liberation—only a blood smear standing between death and deliverance.

Hag Hamatzot focuses on the matzah, described in the Haggadah as “lehem oni,” the bread of affliction. Matzah captures the burdens of slavery since on the night of their deliverance—but surely every other day before that—Israelites subsisted on matzah, for they were deprived of the time needed to wait for dough to rise. Hag Hapesah and Hag Hamatzot evoke terror and deprivation but within each concept, the final plague and the simple bread that nourished the Israelites, is the promise of liberation.

The other two names of the holiday Hag ���’aviv (the Festival of Spring) and Zeman Herutenu (the Time of Our Liberation) leave the bitter, harsh conditions behind, instead focusing on hope and salvation.

As the Midrash emphasizes, the springtime Exodus was a deliberate choice on God’s part.

Rabbi Akiva said: [God] only took [the Israelites] out [of Egypt] in a month fit for going out. Not in Tammuz because of the heat. And not in Tevet because of the cold. Rather, in Nissan for it is fit to go out on the road in it: there’s no heavy heat, nor heavy cold. And if you say Tishrei—behold there are seasons of rain in it. [Numbers Rabbah (3:6)]

A logical choice to be sure; the Israelites would have been hampered by heavy rains, mud, or undue heat had God liberated them in any other season. But the symbolism of springtime is unmistakable. We feel the shackles loosening as we begin to see signs all around us—new buds on the trees, warmer weather, longer days. Renewal and rebirth are in the air. Rav Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook captures this well by noting that “Israel’s exodus from Egypt will forever remain the spring of the entire world” [Meged Yerahim, Nissan 5674 (1914)].

The final name of the holiday, Zeman Herutenu, captures the holiday’s essence—and the founding story of our people, birthed through the experience of liberation from bondage. It is this focus that has provided hope and inspiration not only for Jews but for oppressed peoples everywhere over the centuries.

The contradictions evoked by these four discrete names of Pesah are essential to our understanding of Pesah and of Jewish life. The sweetness of our liberation is tied to the bitterness of our slavery. As we learn in the Talmud, Moshe broke the first set of tablets in fury upon witnessing the Golden Calf that the Israelites had built, but according to the Rabbis the Israelites later carried both the new set of tablets and the broken ones with them in the portable tabernacle (BT Berakhot 8a–b).

So, as we prepare to recite the Pesah story at the seder, let’s hold tight to the dual messages of the holiday. We retell the story not only to viscerally relive the experience of slavery and liberation annually, but also because we are different each year and can thus draw new insight and meaning each and every time. Some years, affliction and despair might feel remote to many reciting the Haggadah. This year—though the impact is uneven—we’ve all been broken. But we’ve also learned so much that can help us heal, improve, and adapt—both personally and as a society.

As the world begins to slowly acclimate to whatever our new normal will be, let’s always carry these hard-learned lessons with us. May it instill in us renewed gratitude for all we have, and may it remind us of how much more needs to be done and the role we might play in bringing us closer to redemption.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

It has been my custom for a number of years to speak with students as Passover approaches, in keeping with the message in this week’s haftarah that God will “reconcile parents with children and children with their parents” before the prophet Elijah returns to announce “the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the Lord.” (I encourage you to have similar intergenerational conversations at your seder.) Two List College students shared their thoughts on the meaning of the holiday with me via a Zoom call a couple weeks ago; several others had been scheduled to join us but were busy packing or already on their way home, 91�첥 having announced the closing of its residence hall. My conversation partners expected to get on a plane soon to be with family. That was the aspect of Passover that meant the most to them, and they worried that the risk of infection might prevent grandparents from joining them at the seder table.

The section of the Haggadah dealing with the ten plagues visited upon the Egyptians had always been “a really troubling part of the seder, really powerful,” the students told me. It would be especially so this year. Neither student was comfortable with the notion that God had intervened in nature to bring the ten plagues as punishment for Pharaoh’s refusal to let the Israelites leave Egypt. Their refusal to see the coronavirus pandemic as caused by God in reprisal for human wrongdoing reinforced that view. (Thankfully, I have thus far seen only one rabbinic statement that attributes the plague we are living through to divine wrath.)

I suspect that other responses to the seder may be influenced by the current pandemic as well. Discussing the so-called “wicked child,” one student said she accepts the idea that some people are wicked but disagrees with the response recommended by the Haggadah: in her words, “isolation, or casting away.” The other student, reflecting on aspects of Judaism or the Jewish community that she dislikes singled out “Jewish insularity” and “disengagement.” Asked whether they believe the Exodus from Egypt was a historical event that actually happened in anything like the manner recalled at the seder, they agreed that it might have occurred—but that’s not what matters. “I don’t really care. What makes our narratives special is the values and lessons they teach us, the laws we gain from them . . . the moral takeaways and shared language.” I wonder if this view too may have been reinforced by the current crisis. Some things matter less than they might have only a few short weeks ago. Other things matter far more.

One of my fondest memories of childhood seders was my mother’s consternation—usually turning to laughter—at the passages in the Haggadah where the Rabbis multiplied the number of plagues. The Torah says that Pharaoh’s magicians called the ten plagues “the finger of God,” and that at the Red Sea the Egyptians saw God’s “strong hand”—meaning that the ten need to be multiplied by at least five. And since each plague revealed multiple divine attributes, that number too should be increased. Rabbi Akiba reaches a total of two hundred fifty plagues on the sea, and his arithmetic leads directly to the singing of Dayenu. Even much less, we affirm, “would have been enough for us.”

Though just as Jews are reminded in a famous midrash that God wept over the suffering of God’s Egyptian children (BT Megillah 10b, BT Sanhedrin 39b), so we too should not celebrate their downfall with a full cup of wine or joy, it seems safe to say that we will consider the terror of the plagues differently this year. Our rivers have not turned red with blood), but the death toll in overcrowded hospitals is running high. COVID-19 is not carried by vermin or transmitted by animals or flying insects, but invisibly, silently, person to person. The darkness it brings on us is symbolic, and the current plague slays first-born only in the sense that the virus strikes the elderly with particular virulence. My mind keeps conjuring up the pictures described in the Torah of Egyptians fearing to venture outside because of the hail and unable to “get up from their place” because of the darkness. I keep thinking about the scene from Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments in which an eerie cloud blows the tenth plague through the streets and into Egyptian homes.

Our plague, unlike the ten, does not distinguish among nations or religions. If on the one hand it has caused gates of entry to be shut down at virtually every national border, on the other hand it has strengthened the sense of global connectedness. We are all literally in this together, as members of the human species; we are battling the disease together, using scientific and medical tools that we possess, according to Judaism and other faiths, as creatures fashioned in God’s image. The common struggle to save human lives, at great personal and collective sacrifice, testifies to worldwide respect for human dignity and worth.

From its very first paragraph the Haggadah seeks to expand our sense of the “we” who are enslaved this year but who next year, we hope, will be free. It urges us to accept responsibilities incumbent on us as part of that greater “we,” both when we are trapped in the state of darkness and when we have gone forth into great light. “Not only our ancestors were redeemed, but we with them . . . let us therefore sing before God a new song.” Parents turning to children and children to parents is one note of that song; recognizing our participation in larger wholes and greater causes than ourselves or our group is another; thankfulness for the food on the table and other daily blessings —which no one will take for granted this Passover—seems the very first antidote to isolation, the first step toward redemption.

May all our Passover celebrations be meaningful, and as joyful as conditions allow.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Whether you are a twenty-something, a Millennial, a Boomer, or a member of the Greatest Generation; whether you are attending your first Passover seder this year or the latest in a long line of sedarim, chances are good that the discussion at your seder table will be different from all Passovers past. The Jewish community of North America has markedly changed since last Passover, shaken to its core by the synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and a significant spike in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States as well as in Europe that seem part of a larger outburst of racism and prejudice. “,” declared a front-page story in the New York Times this week, the “ancient bias” being the one recounted in the Passover Haggadah. Pharaoh and his armies may have drowned in the Red Sea, as the Haggadah relates—but hostility to the Children of Israel lives on.

I wanted to know what younger Jews are making of the disturbing conjunction between the ancient Passover story and the news of the day. Would their celebration of a beloved family ritual take on new gravity? Would they look differently at Pharaoh, anti-Semitism, and the place of Jews in the world? I invited three students enrolled in 91�첥’s List College to share their thoughts and feelings about Passover as the holiday approaches—a discussion that I recommend all of us have next week around the seder table.

“And the Egyptians did evil to us and made us suffer. They set upon us hard labor.”

Not surprisingly, given the widespread popularity of Passover among American Jews, the students all said they love the family sedarim held in their homes; one of the things they like most is the lively discussion: “different perspectives,” “huge arguments,” the way one tells the same story each year but sees it in new and varied lights. Despite that variety of viewpoints, they agreed that the motives and actions of Pharaoh and his people in persecuting the Children of Israel had never been a major topic of discussion at their sedarim. “It’s always taken for granted that the Jews are going to win. So core points of the story are glossed over.”

All confessed that they felt somewhat uncomfortable with the Haggadah’s portrayal of the Egyptian people as worthy of destruction by God. “I don’t feel guilty about it,” one student said thoughtfully. “But I do feel uncomfortable celebrating the deaths and destruction of other people.” The recitation of the ten plagues inflicted by God on Pharaoh and his nation seemed to accentuate the theme of vengeance, for all that the sages urged compassion toward the Egyptians who drowned in the sea and made ritual expression of that compassion a feature of the Haggadah.

Had Pittsburgh changed their attitudes in any way? “American Jewry now understands it is vulnerable,” one student said, noting that her family—immigrants from a country rife with anti-Semitism—never had the illusion that Jews are safe here. The news of the shootings meant even more than it might have otherwise, another explained, because he learned of it when walking with his grandfather. It was not surprising to the student, even though he himself had never experienced anti-Semitism. Mass shootings are now common in America, and he had known at some level that anti-Semitism existed. “We’re living with this extra thing we are carrying now.” This shooting meant more than others, however. “I asked myself, ‘What if this had been my Conservative synagogue?’” “I was frustrated by how little surprise I felt. Mass shootings are part of our culture.”

“Pour out Thy wrath upon the nations that know Thee not.”

I wondered if these students—all of whom possess a strong Jewish identity and are active in larger social causes—were thinking differently about non-Jews now than in the past. On the one hand, they agreed, “it’s difficult to have a sense of empathy for people with sentiments of pervasive hatred . . . It’s getting harder and harder to have empathy for them.” On the other hand, no one they knew personally expressed the attitudes of the Pittsburgh shooter. Anti-Semitism, they believe, is a strand of the same hatred and violence with which other minorities are dealing in America these days. Their non-Jewish friends had expressed support after the shootings, even if not all of them could fully understand what it is like to be a minority.

One student noted that subjects like racism and anti-Semitism do not come up when playing basketball with friends. “It’s not what counts” there—and that was a good thing. None of their sedarim included recitation of the medieval prayer—a feature of traditional Haggadot—that God “pour out Thy wrath” upon Israel’s enemies. It was less important to him that his non-Jewish friends “say X, Y or Z all the time” in response to anti-Semitic incidents, one student remarked thoughtfully, than that they “look past individuals, to the system that allows white supremacy to fester.”

“This year we are slaves. Next year we will be free.”

That was in fact the lesson of Passover, they agreed. “I do hope we are able to build a society where [events like Pittsburgh] can’t happen.” Rather than ask ourselves or others what we would have done if we had been living in the 1930s and 40s and faced Nazi persecution, the emphasis should be on what we are doing—and going to do—in America right now. Acknowledging one’s responsibility to make changes in our society and the world is what Passover is about. The seder calls us to work for redemption, both individual and societal.

I had one final question for my students—and their answer saddened me. Did they expect to see an end to anti-Semitism in their lifetime? None of them did. I don’t think I would have gotten that response from three Jewish college students in America a year ago. Nor would I have given it when I was their age, nearly 50 years ago. Mass shootings have apparently become a fact of life in contemporary America, as has the open expression of racism and all other sorts of hostility and prejudice. Suspicion of the stranger—every kind of stranger—has become alarmingly widespread.

“In every generation we must look upon ourselves as if we personally had come forth from Egypt . . . One must therefore sing before the Lord a new song.”

I have new appreciation this year for the Haggadah’s sober recognition of some disturbing facts of life in the world, then and now—the way minorities are often treated, and power abused; the enslavement of body and spirit; the grinding down of hope—and for the way it seeks to move us, seated around a table with family and friends, sated with good food and four cups of wine, not to dwell upon victimhood but rather to work for redemption.

“Next Year in Jerusalem,” we declare at the conclusion of the seder—an expression of hope for a society free of anti-Semitism and all other forms of prejudice and persecution, and a declaration of determination that between this Passover and next we will stand up and do what we can to make that hope a reality.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

“Wise” children, for example—those who want to know the order of things down to the last detail—might ask this question: After inviting all who are needy to join the meal, and opening the door wide for Elijah, how will we make sure the “Dreamers” who so need our help are not cast out of America, and African refugees are not expelled from Israel?  What’s the plan for carrying out this clear imperative of Passover?

“Wicked” children might ask pointedly, as is their wont, “What is the meaning of all this to you?” In other words: “Are we just going through ritual motions, year after year, or are we prepared to act on the lessons of the holiday?” We castigate Pharaoh for inflicting death on Israelite children, and express sorrow for the Egyptian soldiers who drowned in the Red Sea during the Exodus. Can we fail to protect our students and schools from shooters who purchase semi-automatic rifles at will? “If you don’t take the lessons of Passover seriously,” this questioner might declare,” neither will I.”

“Simple” children might just throw up their hands. “Really? You want me to recite the Ten Plagues sent to punish the Egyptians long ago—blood, lice, disease, and all the rest—but not say a word about far worse plagues afflicting the entire world right now as a result of climate change, with more devastation surely to come? I don’t get it. Plagues are plagues. Don’t hardened hearts go against the lesson of this holiday?”

And for those who don’t know how to ask—because they are too young, too naïve, or too ignorant of the Passover story or the day’s news—their elders at the seder might “open up to them,” as the Haggadah instructs, having learned in this year of #MeToo how important it is to hear voices of those who have been silent. Explain, with honesty and humility, that we do try our best to repay the gift of freedom. We are thankful for “what the Lord did for me when I went forth from Egypt.” We do want to leave the seder table inspired to translate ritual to action more effectively than we have in the past and put an end to oppression in all its forms. We want their help, we need their help, in making that happen.

I want all newcomers to Passover or to Judaism to know that the memory of Exodus from Egypt, formative for Jews and for so many others as well, appears in one form or another almost everywhere in Jewish life and liturgy. When Jews recite Kiddush on Sabbaths and holidays, we do so “as a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt.” The very first of the Ten Commandments given to the Children of Israel at Sinai introduces the Commander as “the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slaves.”  Whenever and wherever individuals take steps, large or small, to “free those who are bound” and “raise up those you are bowed down,” in the words of the morning prayers—because they are poor, because they are women, because they belong to a racial or religious minority—the memory of Exodus is activated, as Torah commands and Jewish liturgy seeks to instill. 

This Passover, I believe, the call to such memory-in-action resounds with particular force and clarity.

I treasure the fact that Abraham Joshua Heschel dared to declare in 1963 that the contest between Moses and Pharaoh begun in Egypt had still not ended, but was being carried on between those who struggled for civil rights in America and those who resisted the achievement of those rights. Oftentimes the translation from Biblical injunction to contemporary social and political issues is not simple or straightforward. But sometimes it is—particularly when fundamental matters of religion or morality are involved. When that is the case, Jews must act, in the name of our teacher Moses, to carry on the commitment to the Exodus.

That conviction, to me, stands at the heart of the Passover holiday and Judaism’s repeated reminder that obligations flow from the fact of freedom. I hope theological quandaries or outright disbelief will not stop anyone of any age from recognizing that each of us personally went forth from Egypt, as the tradition insists—whatever that “Egypt” was for us, and to whatever degree we have been liberated. Every one of us enjoys many gifts in our lives—therefore we all have gifts to share. We have questions to ask of the established order and challenges to pose. It is our responsibility to ask those questions and to pose those challenges, to the very best of our ability. Passover is meant to help with this work.

To younger participants at 2018 seders, I express the fervent hope that you will ask especially good questions this year that call older participants to account for the unfinished Exodus work to which Passover summons us.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).