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THE GREAT LESSON OF PASSOVER: ZEI A GUTTE YID, BE A GOOD JEW

THE FESTIVAL OF FREEDOM—PASSOVER 5772
Baruch Cohen

In loving memory of beloved Malca z’l

I will bring you out from under the burden of the Egyptians,
and I will rid you of bondage and I will redeem you.…
I will take you to be my people.”
Exodus 6:6-7

Passover has endeared itself to the Jewish people because of the high principles embodied in the festival. Around the festive Seder table, we recall our long, stormy history. During our long and often dreary centuries of adversity, we Jews found renewed strength and hope, and fought victoriously several wars, in our Passover quest for freedom!

Today, Passover calls the Jewish people to hold steadfast to our conviction that justice and freedom will prevail. The gathering around the festive Seder table provides Jews with a warm and sustaining happiness, joy, strength, and pride for our beloved State of Israel and the girls and boys of the Israel Army (I.D.F), who fought, and continue to fight, for peace and justice for Am Israel, the people of Israel, and the world over!

Historically, the spirit of Passover has played—and continues to play—a glorious role in the just and democratic struggle for human dignity and the eternal quest for human freedom. We Jews received sustenance from the history of our liberation from Egyptian slavery millennia ago—for us Passover marks our birth as free people, and its religious significance has been profound. The theme, freedom, continues to resound in modernity, across the globe.

Today, as always, Passover’s story and legacy sustain the Jewish people in its never-ending struggle against the ugliness of global hate and anti-Semitisim.

Hag Pesach Sameach. Happy Passover!

(Baruch Cohen is Research Chairman for the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.)

HOW PASSOVER WILL BE OBSERVED
ON THE EAST SIDE
Bert Levy

NY Times, April 16, 1905

The following article appeared in the New York Times on April 16, 1905.

Next Wednesday evening, the first night of Passover, thousands of the Children of Israel on the great east side [of New York] will sit by their firesides in faith, hope, and contentment. From the dim haze of antiquity hunted from shore to shore, they have at last found peace in this country of glorious freedom, where they can at least worship their god in peace, and where their Passover comes without menace of riot and bloodshed.

Sitting among the old men of the Jewish quarter during the coming week, it will require no great stretch of imagination to substitute a Biblical setting of bygone ages for the musty walls of the prosaic east side tenement. As one wanders among the gentle, fervent, and holy worshipers during the Passover week and listens to the soft, low Hebrew melodies, with the strange jingle of rhyme, and watches the quaint ceremonials, the dingy interior of the shools (synagogues) fade from the sight, and in their place the student of biblical lore will see as it were—in the mind’s eye—pictures not of this age.

Imprisoned in an area of narrow, sombre streets, dreary houses darkened by elevated roads and surrounded by sordid sights, the spirit of the Jew that has made him rise superior to thousands of years of persecution comes to his rescue, and on this night of nights—Seder night—he is once again the happy, chosen child of the almighty, for is not Pharaoh and all his hosts, with his purple and fine linen, his great treasure cities, at the bottom of the Red Sea smitten—so tradition has it—with plagues?

On the first night of Passover, the Jew, in a spirit of charity, will open the door of his house to his poorer brother and invite him to his table for, on this night of nights, the poor sits with the rich on equal terms.

The beautiful sentiment of opening the door to the poor brethren has come down from those barbarous times when the Jew on the first night of Passover chanted his prayers behind tightly barred doors, for it was on this night riotous mobs went forth to heap insult and death upon the poor Israelites at their devotions. The roughs were maddened (as they are today in some antiSemitic countries) and stimulated to all sorts of brutality inflicted upon the harmless members of a noble race by the basely concocted rumour that the blood of Christian children was being used in their ceremonials. The more courageous of the Israelites threw open their doors, and facing the howling mobs, demanded that the leaders should come in and be present at the ceremony to refute the lying stories of child killing.… In this great Republic—the Jew’s paradise—the fear of mobs or interference of any sort is indeed remote.…

To the good Jew the Seder night—the beginning of the week of things unleavened—is a night of extreme happiness. The gathering of the family, the strange symbolic dishes, the bitter herbs, apples, spices, and wines, the roasted bone and lamb, the salted water, and the cups of raisin wine and the lighted candles all placed upon the snow-white table cloth are to him fraught with a meaning sincere and holy. Few things taste sweeter to him than the matzos (Passover cake) dipped in the raisin wine. The varying species of food at this festive season bring to the elders of the family pleasure in the memory that they are no longer slaves in Egypt and to the younger a feeling of pride in being free and happy members of the ancient race in a country where there’s no persecution.…

The non-Jewish New Yorker looking in upon an east side Jewish family next Wednesday night would marvel at the quaint Old-World atmosphere but a few blocks from busy Broadway. The teeming population will have done on this day with the sordid struggle of trade and pour to the Shools and Chevras (small congregations) to lift up its voice in weird, undulating prayers and assonances that would have been handed down by generation to generation from the immemorial past.

At the center table the youngest male member of the family will ask the father: “Why does this night differ from all other nights?” and the father will reply: “ Slaves have we been in Egypt,” and he will recite at great length from the prayer book the tale of the deliverance from bondage—the most ancient tale in the rituals of the civilized universe, the company meanwhile punctuating the mention of each plague told in the recital by dipping the finger in the glass of raisin wine and jerking it over the shoulder.

Throughout the world on this day sons of Judaism will proclaim the belief for which its generations have lived and died. The Jew in Russia will send forth in melancholy cadences his cry of gratitude even from amid his persecution and suffering—in the great cities of Europe, in the diamond fields of South Africa, and in the great cities of the Australian Commonwealth the declaration will be the same: “Hear O Israel, The Lord Our God Is One.” The faith that has travelled by the great high roads and queer byways of history to the present generation has bridged the gulf created by separate languages, and Israel is as one in its faith.…

A HAPPY PASSOVER GREETING TO ALL MY MANY FRIENDS
Michele Bachmann

Jerusalem Post, April 4, 2012

As millions around the world begin to celebrate the feast of Passover at sundown on Friday, April 6, it is important to remember why this celebration exemplifies God’s mercy on His people. When the children of Israel cried out to the Lord because of their great suffering at the hands of the Egyptians, we know “God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them” (Exodus 2:25). God responded with 10 plagues sent to do unimaginable damage on Egypt in order to deliver His people.

When the first nine plagues did not soften the heart of Pharaoh, the Lord sent his tenth and final plague: the slaughter of the first-born males in each family. By believing and obeying specific instructions from the Lord, the Israelites were spared this horrific plague and ultimately the destruction led to their freedom from Egyptian tyranny.

God foretold the liberation of the children of Israel…in [the Torah]. His promises to the ancient Israelites were near to my heart as I grew up, which is why I took the first opportunity to go to Israel when I was a young woman. The day after I graduated from high school in 1974, I took a flight to Israel.

I went to work for the summer on Kibbutz Be’eri near Beersheba. Aside from the beauty of the country and deep cultural and spiritual appreciation of the Jewish people, the experience gave me a clear realization: Israel is under a constant external threat. During my time, we worked on the kibbutz from four in the morning until noon, and at all times we were accompanied by soldiers carrying machine guns. While we were working, they were making sure there were no land mines in the fields.…

Today, Israel still faces those threats and more. For this reason, the United States must declare, in no uncertain terms, that it is our policy to utilize all military strength to support and defend our strongest ally in the Middle East, Israel.

On March 4 of this year, President Obama made the case that diplomatic sanctions are working in Iran. His words, “Now is the time to let our increased pressure sink in, and to sustain the broad international coalition we have built,” point to the need to let diplomacy take its course. These are powerful words and I certainly commend both the Bush administration and the Obama administration for the increasing economic sanctions on Iran. However, has any evidence surfaced that these sanctions are hindering the development of a nuclear weapon?… Unfortunately, report after report seems to lend credence to the fact that Iran is growing dangerously close to having nuclear capability.

Furthermore, there are those that wrongly believe that Iran can be contained or that Iran is strictly Israel’s problem. Make no mistake; a nuclear Iran threatens the safety and security of a region that directly affects the interests of the United States. If Iran were to obtain a nuclear weapon, many surrounding Arab states…will most likely do everything in their power to obtain one, beginning a deadly nuclear arms race. Additionally, Iran has made clear through its intrusion into our own hemisphere that it will not only provide support to rogue nations south of our border, it could also provide secrets of nuclear capability. Just imagine the devastation of a nuclear Cuba or Venezuela.

To Israel, the threat is real and very close. Just over 950 miles away from Jerusalem (roughly the distance by air from Washington, DC, to Miami) is Tehran and its fanatical leadership. The chilling escalation of tensions between Israel and Iran leaves the United States with but two choices: stand with our long-time democratic ally or marginalize Israel’s position leaving it even more vulnerable to attack. I write this not to express the obvious, but to urge the American public to stand up and demand that our elected officials clearly explain their policies on stopping a nuclear Iran.…

In the 38 years since I worked in Israel, I have been privileged to visit the country many times. I always return with a stronger reality and greater concern for Israel’s safety and security. However, having returned just two weeks ago from a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence trip to the country, and having met privately with numerous Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Netanyahu, the dangers our great friend Israel faces today are more acute and more serious than ever.

Friends, feel assured and confident this Passover, I pledge to do everything in my power to protect and secure one of our most precious allies, the great State of Israel. A Happy, Healthy Pessah.

(Michele Bachmann is a US Congresswoman.)

ZEI A GUTTE YID
Jonathan Rosenblum

Jerusalem Magazine, March 29, 2012

A respected talmid hacham (Torah scholar) and friend of mine shared with me the following story, or more accurately stories within stories, to convey the essence of the mitzva of Seder night—”And you shall tell it to your son.…”

One year he took his family away for Shabbat Hagadol, the Shabbat before Passover, to a small settlement in the Galilee.… The arrival of a talmid hacham in distinctive dress at the settlement occasioned much interest, and he was asked to deliver the traditional Shabbat Hagadol drasha (sermon).

My friend was used to speaking to advanced yeshiva students, and he wondered what he could say that would benefit a largely unlearned audience. In the end, he decided to speak about how precious Seder night is, and how we can take advantage of the opportunity it affords us. Seder night, he stressed, is much more than a wonderful occasion for the entire family…to gather around the table. It is the time for a father to convey to his children the essence of his “ani ma’amin,” to share with them the lessons that he would most like to be remembered by and, even more importantly, that he would like his children to live by.

To bring home to them what he was talking about, he told them the following story.

One of the talmidim (students) in the yeshiva in which my friend taught lost his father. My friend went to comfort his student, and as was his custom, he kept the discussion centered entirely on the deceased. His student told him that his father had never had much of an opportunity to learn Torah. At a young age, he had arrived in England on one of the Kindertransports from Germany. Because he came all by himself, without any family members, he was eventually sent to Palestine, where he made his way to Petah Tikva.

Though he had never learned in a yeshiva, he remained religious and, in time, became the initiator of almost everything that took place in the Great Synagogue of Petah Tikva. He arranged the various shiurim (classes) in the shul (synagogue)…and took responsibility for the upkeep of the shul. His sons all grew to be talmidei hachamim.…

[During the visit with his student], my friend asked the older of the sons the secret of his father’s success. How did someone with little formal learning and all alone in the world from a young age grow to be someone who took upon himself so much responsibility for the community and merit so much success with his own children? The young man replied that he had only recently thought about the question for the first time. Until then, his father was just his father, and everything about him was just the way it was. But when it finally occurred to him to wonder how his father had remained faithful to his Judaism while so many from ostensibly more favorable circumstances had not, he had asked his father, who answered with a story from his own childhood.

When he was a young boy, less than 10 years old, his father sent him to Germany from the town in which they lived in Austria. Only he was allowed to cross the border. Father and son sat in the early morning darkness waiting for the train that would separate them forever. Neither spoke.

Finally the lights of the train appeared. As the father lifted his son onto the train, he broke the silence: “Zei a gutte Yid—remain a good Jew,” he told his son. As the train began to pull out of the station, the father ran alongside yelling, “Zei a gutte a Yid!” The train gained speed, and the father kept running after it, screaming, “Zei a gutte Yid!” As he ran, the father tripped and fell prostrate on the station platform. That image of his father running after the train and then falling, as he desperately tried to implant the message to be a good Jew in his son’s heart, remained with the young boy the rest of his life. And he lived up to it, under the most adverse circumstances.

When he had finished telling the story of those last minutes between a Jewish father and son and their lifelong impact, my friend urged his listeners to view the Seder night as if it were the last five minutes that they would have with their children, the last chance that they would have to influence them.…

The power of the memories, the presence of the entire family, from youngest to oldest, gathered around the table on Seder night provide an occasion to speak to our children unlike any other time of the year. It is an opportunity to convey to them not just the essentials of Jewish belief over the millennia, but also the principles of our own lives that we wish to pass on to them, and from them to their children and to their children’s children. Let us not waste the opportunity.

The following apology was issued by the Executive Director of Hillel Montreal in response to CIJR’s protest over the use of an inappropriate image in Hillel’s Passover advertisement:

 

Dear Prof. Frederick Krantz (Director CIJR),

 

I share your issue with the graphic and apologise on behalf of Hillel Montreal that you, and others, were offended. There was a lapse in judgement made at Hillel and the email was sent out before it received final approval. Rest assured that this will not happen again.…

 

I hope that you have a Chag Kasher V’Sameach.

 

Best regards, Jeff Bicher

 

Please note that CIJR will be closed on Friday, April 6 and Monday, April 9.
The
Daily Briefing will resume Tuesday, April 10. Happy Passover!

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