A Passover Lesson To Last The Year

 

Dear JCCP/CBT Family,

This Shabbat, the Shabbat that precedes Passover, has a special name in our tradition. It is Shabbat Hagadol - the Great Shabbat. As I have shared so many times in the past, Shabbat Hagadol was one of the times of the year when the Rabbi gave an unusually long sermon, in this case to encourage reflection on the great ideas of Passover. It was also a good time to rest from the intense preparation that always accompanies the holiday.

Today, I want to share a Shabbat Hagadol message with you, one that I hope will last all year long. It is motivated by news that you are all familiar with: the crisis at the southern border.

I will not offer solutions for this issue, for I am not an expert in these matters, and this complex problem is decades in the making.  We will not solve it soon.  But the plight of the people who are arriving there sounds a lot like those of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, many of whom took all kinds of desperate measures to come to this country, and were lucky enough to get in because of immigration policies in place in that time. Immigration is a difficult issue, but we must never fail to demonstrate compassion to those who are seeking the very protections denied to hundreds of thousands of Europe’s Jews who sought asylum in this country in the 1930’s, only to have the doors shut in their faces, and suffer under the Nazis. Our historical experiences must make us look past the political machinations, and see the very people who are in real need of a better and safer future.

We have worked hard to get ready for Passover.  That work was likely made more difficult by the fact that Passover begins on a Saturday night, which is not a terribly frequent occurrence.  The pandemic will again limit the number of people at our Seders, and I want to thank and acknowledge your diligence in taking the necessary precautions to keep yourselves and your loved ones safe. It is hard to be without our families and “Seder regulars” again.  But on Shabbat Hagadol we take some time amidst all the effort that is part of the Passover experience to reflect on exactly what it is we are doing, and it’s message.   Yet unlike the laws of Passover, which are the most complex of the year, the message is a simple one. It’s the central part of the Passover Seder, but the message must last the entire year. You know what it is.

“In every generation it is incumbent upon all of us to see ourselves as if we personally came out of the land of Egypt.”  

During the Seder, our Rabbis have commanded us to reenact what it must have been like to have nothing, to suffer shame and abuse and humiliation and slavery. And to never lose that perspective despite our hard-earned affluence, freedom and power. So even if we drive a nice car, have a home, and have the money to take a vacation once in a while, we remember that there is no authentic Jewish experience devoid of an outsider’s perspective, a poor person’s perspective, a refugee’s perspective. That’s why this is the most important part of the Seder.  The appreciation of the pain and suffering of our ancestors, and how they must have felt on the night of their liberation is the heart of the Passover experience. It is the point of the “maggid”, the literal telling of the Passover story. And only if we say the words and let their meaning inform the way we look at the world, can we truly say with conviction the words of the Passover Haggadah: “this is what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.”

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,

Rabbi Arthur Weiner