I’ve often wondered about how our ancestors approached a Passover Seder when all hell was breaking loose. How did the Jews of Spain gather around Seder tables during the Inquisition, or the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust?
What did they talk about? Were they able to just read the Haggadah and follow the many rituals of the Seder table, or did they naturally surrender to the events of the day and express their fear and apprehension?
This is the dilemma of the Passover Seder: On one hand, if all we do is follow the tradition, there’s no need to be distracted by external events; but on the other, because we’re human, that’s not very realistic.
This is the dilemma of the Passover Seder: On one hand, if all we do is follow the tradition, there’s no need to be distracted by external events; but on the other, because we’re human, that’s not very realistic. When people get together, they talk about things that are on their minds. Conversation is not something that is easy, or even desirable, to control, especially if something’s bothering us.
As is usually the case, there’s plenty that is bothering us this year. We can be grateful, of course, that we’re very far from the dangers of yesteryear, but that doesn’t mean our minds are not full of anxiety.
For the many of us who are deeply connected to Israel, how will we avoid talking about the biggest civil strife in Israel’s history? For others, there’s more than enough troubling news to occupy our minds—from the epidemic of mass shootings to the indictment of Donald Trump to the alarming rise in crime to the state of the economy to the growing crisis of mental health, and so on.
Our generation is significantly more distracted by external events than previous generations, for the simple reason of technology. When my great-grandparents sat down for their Seders in Casablanca many moons ago, no one was checking their Twitter or Instagram feeds. The word feed, in those days, was taken literally.
If you’ve ever hosted guests for Shabbat, you’re likely already familiar with that wonderful art of not allowing stressful news to diminish a ritual meal. God knows there’s nothing like a political argument to spoil a beautiful Shabbat table.
So, when we gather at our Seder tables this year, how will we keep the negativity of the media ecosystem from disrupting our special night? What subjects of engagement can replace the predictable stress of the news?
There are plenty, but we’d like to offer two. First, take a look at our cover story from author and historian Gil Troy, where he argues for adding another story to the traditional Exodus story: our own family stories.
“Tell your family’s super-heroic origin-story,” Troy suggests. “Recreate, dramatically and memorably, your yitziat mitzrayim, your escape from an Egypt of Old World poverty, oppression, and depression to this New World of prosperity, freedom, and opportunity.”
As Troy reminds us, this applies to pretty much all of us: “No matter where we came from, no matter how far we have – or haven’t – gone economically, it’s mind-blowing how many of us share such similar family tales.”
Our second suggestion to keep downbeat news from hijacking your Seder: Look at our “Seder to Refine Our Characters,” which we first published in 2018. Written by Rabbi Zoë Klein Miles and Tamar Andrews, it’s as relevant this year as ever.
To “conquer whatever enslaves us and move toward our highest ideals,” the authors discuss four character traits (one for each cup), and provide hints for teaching them to kids.
Is there a more elevating subject of engagement than refining character traits such as curiosity, courage, kindness and humility? That last trait is especially noteworthy.
As Andrews writes, “In today’s world of tweeters and Instagrammers who post only the best of themselves, it’s hard not to fall into the trap of ‘Look how awesome I am.’ It has been said that a humble person doesn’t think less of himself, he simply thinks of himself less.”
With humility, she adds, “the other character traits fall into place. To learn humility, we admit our mistakes to our children and to ourselves and raise children to be team players. We also encourage appropriate responses to success that acknowledge accomplishments but never to the point of arrogance.
“Finally, our children will become what we are, and so on this night of asking questions, let’s all ask, ‘Am I the person I want my child to become?’”
We should consider it a blessing to live at a time when we can use our Passover Seders to tell our family stories and refine our characters. All we need to do is forget the news for one night and create our own.
We should consider it a blessing to live at a time when we can use our Passover Seders to tell our family stories and refine our characters. All we need to do is forget the news for one night and create our own.
The Passover Seder remains one of American Jews’ favorite rituals. Nearly 80%will attend one this year. Beyond the fun foods and catchy tunes, the family dramas and childhood memories, the kid-friendly “Die-Die-aynu” silliness and the adult-friendly substance, the seder perfectly Americanizes traditional Judaism.
Passover lacks the Eastern European guilt-tripping heaviness of the Days of Awe; it’s also devoid of Shabbat’s weekly, constricting, embarrassing reminders of Jews’ forever otherness. Jews confuse: We look like we fit in, but we just keep sticking out.
On a more positive, normalizing note, the weird, ancient ritual of the Seder is surprisingly all-American. The Seder is individualistic, encouraging creativity. It’s home-based, empowering participants. It’s family-friendly, representing the nicest, cuddliest, American Jewish values. It’s gratitude-centered, delighting traditionalists and new-agists alike. Most importantly, most American-Jewish-pride-inducing of all, it’s freedom-focused — telling the great progressive story of the Jews’ emergence as a free people, which American Revolutionaries echoed, African-American slaves reenacted, and many subsequent liberation movements revered. No wonder the Seder is the Jewish ritual most Jews choose to celebrate with non-Jews.
But beware. Every Seder should come with the equivalent of the Surgeon General’s warning label on cigarette packages: Don’t over-Americanize this blue-and-white event into a red-white-and-blue, meaningless mush. There are only so many times you can sing “We Shall Overcome” and “If I Had a Hammer” instead of “Avadim Hayeenu” (We were slaves!) and “Hallel” (Praise God!).
This year, every elder should seize the moment and the captive audience. Tell your family’s super-heroic origin story.
This year, every elder should seize the moment and the captive audience. Tell your family’s super-heroic origin-story. Recreate, dramatically and memorably, your yitziat mitzrayim, your escape from an Egypt of Old World poverty, oppression and depression to this New World of prosperity, freedom and opportunity. No matter where we came from, no matter how far we have, or haven’t, gone economically, it’s mind-blowing how many of us share such similar family tales.
Judaism has two kinds of mitzvot (commandments) aseh v’lo ta’aseh (to do and not to do): thou shalts and thou shalt nots. This Passover, the imperative to tell your story is both. It’s a positive mitzvah: Thou shalt tell your family’s story, so future generations will know where we came from and how far we have come. These stories can inspire and instruct. My late father-in-law loved recalling how, as he built his real estate empire, whenever he overextended, he would approach a lender two weeks before the due date and ask for the next month off, promising to repay it along with an extra month of interest when the loan ended. That short story told a long, wonderful tale about starting with nothing, thinking ahead, leveraging tomorrow’s promised payoffs to alleviate today’s shortfalls, and, most importantly, creating community and integrity by being an honorable man of his word.
Today, unfortunately, this narrative homework due on both Seder nights, and as often as possible thereafter without being annoying, is also a negative mitzvah: Thou shalt not succumb to the Blue State mania, haunting most young American Jews, that negates what we accomplished, robs us of our justifiable pride in our achievements, and neutralizes the toolbox generations ofAmerican Jews needed previously to make it, and what this generation still needs to succeed.
A Big White Lie haunts American Jewry: that Jews are guilty of “white privilege.” This slur is a poison arrow targeting every young idealistic Jew. It caricatures Jews as white, rich, lazy heirs to America’s riches or, worse, plunderers on the backs of Black people, rather than plucky, talented avatars of the American dream. Around the Seder table, we need a communal effort to refute this libel, by retelling our story and redefining ourselves.
Sitting at Seder links us to every ancestor in each Jewish family’s unbroken, millennial-strong chain from the liberated children of Israel wandering the desert to America’s uber-free children all-too-often deserting Judaism today.
Refuting the Libel: We Jews Shall Overcome Our Whitening!
At Seder-time we slow down, sit down, calm down and get down on Jewish historical time. On April 5th it will no longer be just 2023. Seder recalls our enslavement 3,000 years ago and liberation 400 years later. Sitting at Seder links us to every ancestor in each Jewish family’s unbroken, millennial-strong chain from the liberated children of Israel wandering the desert to America’s uber-free children all too often deserting Judaism today.
If a Seder doesn’t feel layered, if it doesn’t echo the old country and long-gone relatives, it’s missing something. At Karpas, the greens course symbolizing spring, the Troys eat potatoes because — as my father told us that his father told him — in Russia, around Passover time, nothing green was available, only kartoshke, potatoes. Consider the countercultural power of entering America’s bounteous supermarkets, passing those dazzling greens, and choosing pale, clumpy potatoes for Karpas.
I added a new memory, layered on my father’s and grandfather’s. In 1985, I spent Passover in Soviet Russia visiting Refuseniks, celebrating our freedom holiday with unfree Jews. Kartoshke were one of the few kosher-for-Passover foods I could eat in that atheist, Jew-hating, freedom-sucking dictatorship — again and again and again.
The author’s maternal grandparents
Similarly, while my grandparents rarely told old country tales, we sang certain old country dirges at Seder that evoke the Eastern European Jewish vibe. More powerful was my late grandfather Leon Gerson’s “Shfuch Chamadcha,” “O Lord, pour out your wrath” on our enemies. He sang it with pained power, without explanation; no additional words were necessary. When my short, timid, beloved grandpa stood and poured out those words, he turned from Leon the scared yid into Aryeh Leib the Maccabean Lion. And we metamorphosed from young ambitious Americans into traumatized yet healing Jews, the winners of the Jewish historical lotto, the luckiest Jews born in 2000 years, born into freedom and America’s welcoming miracle.
Grandpa died in 1998. Each Seder, I try replicating his power, his pain, but can’t. He was born into darkness. I’m a child of light. With trembling voice and shaking hands, in that 32-word prayer, my grandfather returned us to those awful moments when other Polish conscripts played “pin the Jew against the electrified fence,” victimizing him, and that horrifying, oft told by my grandmother tale about how her cousin unintentionally smothered her baby to death in a crawl space while quieting the child during a pogrom.
Instantly, Grandpa summoned the anguish of Auschwitz, the curse of Kishinev, the misery of mass martyrdom throughout Jewish history.
In doing that, Grandpa instinctively, unconsciously, and preemptively inoculated us against today’s nonsense. Clearly, I see that racism still festers in America. I acknowledge that when I walk down the street in this all-too-race conscious society, I get treated a certain way because of the color of my skin but also because of the nerdy-academic uniform I wear and the vibe I give wherever I go.
Refuting the “white privilege” libel doesn’t require counter-lies imagining a race-neutral society. But when that lovely, thoughtful, thwarted and scared man I revered as “Grandpa,” walked down Main Street in Queens, no one thought, “Oh, there’s a white guy, part of the ruling class.” Even before he opened his mouth, with his elegant, correct, but accented English, people thought “there goes a yid” or a “Jew” — depending on their perspective. It was, pardon my ethnic stereotyping, his large nose and prominent ears, his shuffle, the way he held himself, and how he dressed — formal but never, ever fashionable, God forbid!
And yes, my Polish refugee grandfather still saw antisemites behind every tree and quaked at policemen, unlike us, his confident, cop-friendly, all-American grandchildren. But Seder night, we absorbed his pain. So now our kids deserve to hear his story.
And yes, my Polish refugee grandfather still saw antisemites behind every tree and quaked at policemen, unlike us, his confident, cop-friendly, all-American grandchildren. But Seder night, we absorbed his pain. So now our kids deserve to hear his story.
The author (right) with his father and grandfather
Both my maternal grandparents, whatever traumas they endured, felt immensely grateful to their new home, America. (My paternal grandparents died too young for me to know them well). They often exclaimed that they lived a miracle or serial miracles catapulting them from the worst ghettos. They escaped Eastern Europe’s virtual economic slavery and Jew-hating barbarism to live America’s wonders. We Gerson-Troy grandkids were lucky. Our grandparents lived into the 1990s, when my two brothers and I were in our twenties and thirties. We could absorb their amazement at the tape-recorder and television and radio and refrigerator and washing machine in their modest Queens home, which either did not exist or were unavailable to commoners when they were born about 120 years ago. Each freedom, each techno-wonder, each goodie they enjoyed, they shoved into the same category: “America.”
When they said “America,” it was a goosebumps moment, a magical word meaning progress, opportunity, civility, dignity, liberty, life itself. Of course, they suffered from American Jew-hatred and Depression-level poverty, even before the Great Depression. Of course, they endured indignities in their day-to-day American lives. Still, they never forgot their good fortune, especially because had they stayed “there” — they often said the word with a shudder — they would have been Hitler’s cannon fodder.
My maternal grandparents lived long enough to see their two children move from apartments to houses, and their son, my uncle, become “a millionaire,” that wondrous word in immigrant Jews’ vocabulary. More than success, more than status, it meant comfort, protection, insulation from life’s vicissitudes, undoing centuries of Jewish history. They lived long enough to see every grandkid accepted into universities they only read about in The New York Times. And they lived long enough to know that our lives would be so much better, richer, safer, cushier than theirs — thank God and thank America.
So thanks to my grandparents’ long lives, we could taste their fear, their trauma, their roller coaster story, their lack of privilege, to laugh off these silly, ahistorical, mind-messing “white privilege” accusations.
We American Jews created “something from nothing” — also the name of Phoebe Gilman’s lovely children’s book.Everything my brothers, cousins and I have is not just a blessing, but also a hard-earned, sweat-stained, talent-generated miracle, refuting our Polish-Ukrainian-Russian past — and the white privilege charge. The “white privilege” accusation launched against Jews is a power move to make us feel perpetually guilty for anything we enjoy. It’s a false accusation, short of a blood libel, but inching too close for comfort to such ugly, demonizing, territory.
This essay emphasizes my family story. But note how generic my personal story is. “White privilege” negates every Jew who had the gumption to leave some 19th- or 20th-century Egypt-like hellhole and start the long passage to America. It underestimates the nerve required to learn a new language, master a new economic, social, cultural and political eco-system and build a new life. It wipes out the pride we should feel in every job our ancestors landed, every degree they earned, every house they bought, every baby step they took, whether or not it became the big life-changing giant step that so many were lucky to take.
Refuting this guilt-spewing “Jews-have-white-privilege” libel, this American-Jewish-perspiration-and-inspiration invisibility ray, this rags-to-riches oversight, does not ignore racism or others’ suffering. It simply reasserts our story, our achievements. And it acknowledges the wondrous, now ironic, arc of American Jewish triumph. Lured by tales of a Goldene Medina, a prosperous country whose streets are made of gold, Jewish immigrants arrived to find that the streets were paved with concrete and potholes, but wide open with opportunity. Then, many — not all! — earned enough to move into Golden Ghettos. As a result, irony of ironies, their most precious possessions, their most delicious achievements, their children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, ended up falling for the same initial con — this time with a mean-spirited, petty, un-American, anti-Jewish political spin, that the streets for Jews were made of gold, yet for others, were made of coal, or worse.
Retelling: In Detail
We Jews, and particularly American Jews, have a great story. Why not tell it again and again? We should be shouting it from the rooftops, not slinking away from it in shame. The Haggadah commands us, “Ve’higgadetah le’vincha,” “tell your children!” The Seder’s child-centered shtick is a clever, traditional yet surprisingly hip way of initiating young Jews into the Jewish club, by telling the ultimate, defining Jewish story: We were slaves, now, wow, we’re free.
Passover affirms the power of specific memories, commandments, commitments.
Today, too many Jews understand freedom only in part. They are, to use Sir Isaiah Berlin’s subtleties, so addicted to asserting their “freedom from” that they forget how wonderful it is to have “freedom to.” Yes, we want freedom from oppressive, heavy-handed defining structures. But Momma Troy wisely warned: If you’re too open-minded, your brains fall out. Passover affirms the power of specific memories, commandments, commitments. We recline to assert our freedom; our freedom to slouch celebrates our freedom from slavery.
If we made it too generic, or spent too much time reading Martin Luther King’s wonderful “I have a dream speech” instead of our particular Maggid, the retelling, Passover would lose its countercultural power.
Too many American Jews don’t understand that dimension of Judaism’s genius and why we still do the Seder in remarkably similar ways that our ancestors did. It’s because the devil isn’t in the details; holiness and memory are. Because we nitpick, especially on Passover, by sweating the small stuff, every Seder swims in historical time, guaranteeing another copy next year. It’s two overlapping problems. If we made it too generic, or spent too much time reading Martin Luther King’s wonderful “I have a dream speech” instead of our particular Maggid, the retelling, Passover would lose its countercultural power, blurring into the general liberal mush most Jewish kids imbibe. And if we made it too passive, quickly passing on some fleeting cliches and good feelings, we would not be leveraging the specific ritual acts rooted in history, consecrated by history, which convey values not just stories, maintaining continuity.
Consider the possibly apocryphal yet illuminating confrontation between America’s WASP-y, antisemitic Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and Israel’s founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1954.
“Tell me, Mr. Prime Minister,” Dulles sneered, “who do you and your state represent? Does it represent the Jews of Poland, perhaps Yemen, Romania, Morocco, Iraq, Russia or perhaps Brazil? After 2,000 years of exile, can you honestly speak about a single nation, a single culture? Can you speak about a single heritage or perhaps a single Jewish tradition?” Smiling, Ben-Gurion noted that the Mayflower sailed from England 300 hundred years earlier. “Now, do me a favor,” he said, “find 10 American children and ask them the following: What was the name of the Captain of the Mayflower? How long did the voyage take? What did the people who were on the ship eat?”
Ben-Gurion knew that few American adults could answer such questions, but most Jewish children in that day knew Moses, the 40 years in the desert, and the Matzah then Manna as the answers, the details illuminating our old-new tale. Similarly, when a British Lord asked why Chaim Weizmann cared about Palestine, not any other random landmass for the Jewish people, Weizmann asked the Lord why he passed dozens of other random old ladies every Sunday, as he traveled 20 miles to visit his mum.
So, yes, we keep reliving the original Yetziat Mitzrayim. But we add our American Jewish twist. Now, we are privileged to add another layer: the Zionist story of a broken, humiliated, wandering people, finally coming home.
Telling this story is particularly important this year despite the political tension. This is still the 75th birthday of Israel’s miracle. Consider the words of the thinker Hillel Halkin, who moved to Israel from America as a young idealist in the 1970s, which we Troys read every year around our Seder table in Jerusalem:
“A great adventure. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. There’s been nothing like it in human history. A small and ancient people loses its land and forgets how to speak its language; wanders defenselessly for hundreds, thousands, of years throughout the world with its God and sacred books; meets with contumely, persecution, violence, dispossession, banishment, mass murder; refuses to give up; refuses to surrender its faith; continues to believe that it will one day be restored to the land it lost; manages in the end, by dint of its own efforts, against all odds, to gather itself from the four corners of the earth and return there; learns again to speak the language of its old books; learns again to bear arms and defend itself; wrests its new-old home from the people that had replaced it; entrenches itself there; builds; fructifies; fortifies; repulses the enemies surrounding it; grows and prospers in the face of all threats. Had it not happened, could it have been imagined? Would anyone have believed it possible?”
This year, Jews should leave an empty seat, or two, at the Seder to acknowledge the Jewish people’s losses this year due to Palestinian terror — especially two brothers murdered instantly, the Paley brothers at a Jerusalem bus stop and the Yaniv young men in a Huwara ambush. Even more important, during “Dayenu,” when we detail the miracles of liberation, or during “Hallel,” when we say “thanks,” Jews worldwide should contemplate how lucky we are to be living in a world with a democratic Jewish state and ask themselves, “How should we celebrate the 75th anniversary of this ongoing miracle, April 26?” At minimum, serve ice cream for breakfast, to the young and the old, so that we taste the sweetness of living in a world with this state.
Redefining: From Slavery to Freedom in America and Israel
If in the Old Country successful Jews downplayed their achievements so antisemites wouldn’t target them, today some Jews are downplaying their achievements so they won’t hate themselves or their kids won’t hate them. It’s not surprising that in this finger-pointing era, when so many try making American winners feel guilty, Jews would excel in these guilt Olympics.
It’s time to end the competitive breast-beating and start the story-telling. Let’s hijack the Seder to tell two simultaneous stories. Tell the American Jewish story from slavery to freedom, from persecution to safety, and tell Israel’s Zionist story from slavery to freedom, from homelessness to home. Then raise a glass, saying, with all the challenges, how lucky we are. And ask the question: Is there another moment in Jewish history in which you would rather be living?
So don’t be shy. Bring out your best tableware. Buy the choicest, juiciest roast. Look your best. And don’t let the hyper-judgmental, “woke” historical grave robbers rob us of our joys.
It’s time to surprise your kids or grandkids. Tell your family origins story. Toast the Zionist miracles of the State of Israel. Then, get personal, get existential. Don’t just ask the young ones “What are you doing, what are you studying, where are you going to college?” — all of which they accurately hear as “How are you going to make the money we did?” Throw them a curveball. Ask them “How is your soul, what are you struggling with, what kind of person do you want to be, what kind of Jew do you want to be? And how does your story fit in with ours?”
Chag Pesach Sameach.
A Modern Dayenu Celebrating Israel’s 75th Anniversary
After thanking God for the many miracles of the Exodus, the flight from Egypt, let’s contemplate the amazing self-generated miracles of the Zionism movement. This was a flight from a latter-day Egypt of Exile, of powerlessness and humiliation, into a movement that helped create a modern state that, for all its challenges, still makes all of us prouder, stronger, freer. This year, let’s use the Seders not just to start counting the Omer toward Shavuot, but also to count toward the Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel Independence Day celebrations, no matter what the headlines say!
How many benefits did we generate for ourselves and the world with the Zionist Leap of Hope — Theodor Herzl’s vision that tomorrow will be better than today, and that it is our responsibility to roll up our sleeves and make it happen?
If Zionists had only reestablished Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland — Dayenu! That would have been miraculous enough.
If Zionists had only offered a welcoming Jewish home to Holocaust survivors, refugees from Arab lands, and other oppressed Jews while preserving civil liberties and free immigration for all — Dayenu! That would have been miraculous enough.
If Zionists had only returned the Jews to history, transforming Jews’ image from the world’s victims to actors on history’s stage, with rights and responsibilities — Dayenu! That would have been miraculous enough.
If Zionists had only built a western-style capitalist democracy with a strong Jewish flavor — Dayenu! That would have been miraculous enough.
If Zionists had only created a dynamic old-new Jewish culture making Israel a central force in revitalizing Jewish secular and religious life in the Jewish homeland and abroad while serving as a bastion of Western culture too — Dayenu! That would have been miraculous enough.
If Zionists had only revived Hebrew, developing “lashon hakodesh,” the Holy Language, into a living language for everyday life reflecting and fueling our national revival — Dayenu! That would have been miraculous enough.
If Zionists had only strengthened a proud Diaspora, giving all Jews throughout the world more spring in our steps and more inspiring songs in our hearts — Dayenu! That would have been miraculous enough.
How much more so are the many benefits that Zionism doubled and quadrupled for us, in Israel and throughout the world? Thanks to this movement of Jewish nationalism, rooted in our sense that we are people, Am Yisrael, with ties to a particular homeland, Eretz Yisrael, and rights to establish a state in that homeland, Medinat Yisrael. Therefore, in merely 75 years since 1948, we, the Jewish people:
•Reestablished Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish homeland.
•Welcomed home over three million Jewish refugees.
•Transformed the Jew’s image from the world’s victim to actors on history’s stage.
•Built a western-style capitalist democracy with a strong Jewish flavor.
•Created a dynamic old-new Jewish culture.
•Revived Hebrew.
•Strengthened a proud Diaspora.
We did all of this while being well aware that we must keep dreaming, building, improving. Because for all we have achieved, we have not yet fulfilled all our high ideals. Still, at this moment, we celebrate all the good, keep striving for better, continue to escape from our old traumas, our old weaknesses, our perennial powerlessness, our ever-so-draining victimhood, and sing “Dayenu!”
Follow-up Thoughts:
Some might prefer to thank God, others thank the Zionists, still others thank both. Think about it. Did Zionism have to be secular enough to succeed yet Jewish enough to be legitimate or Jewish enough to succeed yet secular enough to be legitimate? No matter how secular and person-centered you might be, it was the Jewishness of the state, the longstanding ties to this particular homeland of Israel, that united Jews, mobilized them, and connected them to one another and to Israel. And no matter how religious and God-centered you might be, if you credit God with creating the State, the Zionist movement still had to speak the secular languages of nationalism and national rights and democracy and national institutions, to function in the modern world and be accepted in the community of nations.
This is a chance to ask about the “miracles” of Israel. How do they affect your life? And what is the next miracle we most desperately need in the Promised Land today?
More simply, this is a chance to ask about the “miracles” of Israel. How do they affect your life? And what is the next miracle we most desperately need in the Promised Land today?
Leave an Empty Chair
Sadly, I am updating something I wrote in 2003, when Palestinian terrorists were targeting Israelis, as they still are today:
Even as we revel in our freedom, some of our brothers and sisters in Israel, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are in pain.
Once again, during this year’s Seders, we will celebrate our joyous holiday of liberation with heavy hearts. Even as we revel in our freedom, some of our brothers and sisters in Israel, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are in pain. This year, as in previous years, we must reclaim our symbols, remember our losses, reaffirm our commitment to Israel, to the Jewish people, and to a true peace.
Over the years, and in this particular surge since last March, when the Palestinians turned toward violence yet again, too many have died, too many have been injured, on both sides. And too many Seders will have empty chairs: missing husbands, fathers, brothers, sons; missing wives, mothers, sisters, daughters.
The Seder’s power comes from its ritualization of memory. It is a primal, sensual, literal service. The Seder plate, evoking the mortar used in building with charoset, and the tears shed by the slaves with salt water, helps us visualize the trauma of slavery.
The physical acts of reclining, of eating special foods, of standing to greet Elijah the prophet, help us feel the joy of Yetziat Mitzrayim, of leaving Egypt. And, in an affirmation of the importance of peoplehood, we mark this special moment not as individuals but as a community.
In that spirit, we cannot proceed with business as usual during these challenging times. We must improvise a new ritual that marks our present pain, that illustrates our vital connection with Israel and Israelis today.
Let each of us, as we gather at our Seders, intrude on our own celebrations by leaving one setting untouched, by having one empty chair at our table. This year, as we mourn two sets of brothers brutally murdered, we might consider two empty chairs, to honor the memory of eight-year-old Asher Menahem Paley and his six-year-old brother Ya’akov Yisrael Paley who were run over at a Jerusalem bus stop, and to honor 21-year-old Hallel Menachem Yaniv and 19-year-old Yagel Yaniv, ambushed in cold blood by a terrorist released from an Israeli jail just months before he committed his heinous crime.
Let us take a moment to reflect on our losses. And let us take the time to learn the name of at least one victim murdered since last Passover, or one victim murdered years earlier, one Jew who cannot celebrate this year’s holiday, one family in mourning, one family with an empty seat at their table and a hole in their hearts.
Let us call out the name of Koby Mandell, age 13, an American immigrant murdered in May, 2001, whose father, Rabbi Seth Mandell, noted the empty seat at his Shabbat table and shared the pain of watching other boys grow up, watching their voices deepen, their shoulders broaden, their gaits quicken, even as his son lay dead.
Let us call out the name of Hadar Goldin, a 23-year-old soldier killed by Hamas in August, 2014 but whose remains Hamas holds in a cruel assault on Hadar’s family and civilized norms.
Let us call out the names of Rabbi Eitam and Na’ama Henkin, ambushed in October, 2015, slaughtered in their car’s front seat as their four children sat in the back.
Let us call out the name of Ezra Schwartz, an 18-year-old kid enjoying his yeshiva “gap” year, gunned down at a traffic stop.
Let us call out the name of Erez Orbach, who fought his army exemption for physical disabilities and was accepted into officer’s training, only to be run over with three other cadets by a truck-driver-terrorist on Jerusalem’s promenade in January 2018.
And let us call out the name of Amir Khoury, a 32-year-old Israel-Arab police officer, who was killed with two young fathers and two foreign workers, just a year ago, on March 29, 2022. Amir helped save many lives that day, but left behind a widow and four young children.
As we call out these names, let us commit to some action, to embrace the victims’ families. Moreover, let us build a friendship with Israel and Israelis, which is not just about politics and not solely about mourning.
And as we call out these names, unlike our enemies, let us not call for vengeance. Instead, as we mourn, let us hope; as we remember the many lives lost during this crazy and pointless century of war, let us pray more intensely for a just and lasting peace, and for an end to the global scourge of terrorism afflicting Jews and non-Jews.
Gil Troy is a Distinguished Scholar of North American History at McGill University, and the author of nine books on American History and four books on Zionism. He is the editor of the new three-volume set, “Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings,” the inaugural publication of The Library of the Jewish People (www.theljp.org). To download a booklet of Zionists Text for the Seder, go to www.giltroy.com
For the next 10 months, the Ronald Reagan Foundation and Presidential Institute in Simi Valley will be featuring an Auschwitz exhibit that takes attendees through not only the history of the Nazi death camp but also antisemitism itself.
The exhibition, titled “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away.” is formed by the Spanish company Musealia in conjunction with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (ABSM) in Poland, and features more than 700 artifacts and 400 photographs from Auschwitz. Among the artifacts are possessions from prisoners including shoes, glasses, hangers, cigarettes (used as currency among the prisoners), tools and a sweater worn by a Holocaust survivor.
Photo by Aaron Bandler
“It’s a very, very impactful exhibit and it’s really designed to educate people of a certain age that don’t have any direct connection, relative, friend what have you to what happened during the Holocaust,” Ambassador Gordan D. Sondland, Presenting Underwriter of the exhibit and the son of Holocaust survivors, told the Journal. “And it’s also a little bit of a slap in the face, hopefully, to Holocaust deniers.”
“These objects, these possessions came from real people that had real lives and what knocks me over is that just about anything you will see under glass here that someone once prized as a heirloom, as a possession, as a simple article of clothing, it’s what helped to represent their humanity,” Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute Executive Director John Heubusch said.
Piotr Cywinski, ABSM Director, told the Journal that the authenticity of the artifacts and photographs provides a “unique experience” for those who are unable to travel to Auschwitz itself. Cywinski also pointed out that the exhibit features some items from the Nazis as well that were used in the camp, including a gas mask and SS boots. “It’s really a very complex history that is told,” Cywinsi said. “It’s complex not only from the point of view of the complexity of the history but of the emotions that you can feel when you go through the exhibit.”
Photo by Aaron Bandler
The exhibit begins with a model of the death camp’s fence and some statistics about the civilians murdered at Auschwitz. But before the Nazis used the town as a death camp, the exhibit explains that Auschwitz was simply a “small town” in Poland bordering Austria-Hungary and Germany.
Attendees are then taken on a journey through a brief history of the Jewish people and then of modern antisemitism. The exhibit explains that “19th century Christian anti-Judaism merged with a new idea: racial theory.” Antisemites promulgated this theory to argue that Jews were racially inferior and thus “a threat” to Western civilization that couldn’t be saved through conversion or assimilation. Jew-hatred increased in post-World War I Germany as blood libels spread “that Jews either shirked military service or were successful in finding jobs in military offices.” “A statistical investigation undertaken by the army clearly demonstrated that this accusation was unfounded, but that did not have any effect on public perception,” the exhibit states. When the Nazis rose to power in Germany, they brought antisemitism into the country’s schools, teaching students that Jews were “lecherous” and “non-patriotic capitalists,” among other things.
Photo by Aaron Bandler
“We felt with this exhibit, as we do with all of our exhibits, that it’s important to set the stage and provide context for the events that you will see when you go through the exhibit,” Heubusch told the Journal.
As for Auschwitz itself, attendees will learn that historians debate on whether or not the death camp was initially designed to house Soviet prisoners or if it was “ad hoc” before it became a death camp. Artifacts and the the aftermath of World War II are also explored.
“The big question is what to do with the remembrance today,” Cywinski said. “This is the kind of thought we wanted to wake up in our visitors: what it means to me today to remember.” Cywinski added that “it’s so strange that 80 years after the war” that there are still voices demonizing the Jews and Israel. “That means really we have to think, what is the role and place of our remembrance today?” Cywinski said.
Sondland said that what ultimately led to the Holocaust was that “ordinary people” in Germany were “sold a pack of lies and believed them, and this is happening today everywhere on other subjects.” He added that the exhibit is “a call to vigilance as well.”
Photo by Aaron Bandler
Heubusch said that Reagan spoke many times “about the horrors of the Holocaust as a way to remind the American people of what really truly did occur and to help give them a sense of how it’s a piece of history that we should never repeat,” adding that spreading this message was “so important to him.” “If there’s one thing that was important to him, it was human rights,” Heubusch said of Reagan. “And this is the ultimate destruction of human rights and when you go through this museum you will see it.” Heubusch also said: “With a hugely unfortunate rise in antisemitism that seems to be occurring not only in the United States but around the world, this [exhibit] is a really important present-day reminder of where that ugliness can go and why it should never happen again.”
The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and the University of Vermont (UVM) reached a resolution agreement on April 3 over a complaint that UVM failed to adequately respond to allegations of antisemitism on campus.
Among the allegations in the complaint, which was filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law in October 2021, included that a sexual assault survivors club announcing that they wouldn’t allow Zionist students to join the club and that students allegedly pelted the UVM Hillel building with rocks and “a sticky substance” for 30-40 minutes. When confronted by a student to stop, one of the offending students asked if the student confronting them was Jewish. And the university didn’t treat it as a bias incident, the complaint alleged. The complaint also alleged that a teaching assistant had asked in social media posts if it would be ethical to give lower grades to Zionist students.
According to a press release, OCR’s investigation into the complaint found that the university “declined to investigate any of the complaints” and took “delayed” measures in response, actions that “may have discouraged students and staff from raising further concerns with the university or with participating in the OCR investigation.” Under the resolution agreement, the university will “issue a statement with a commitment to address discrimination based on shared ancestry, including antisemitism” and “review and revise its policies and procedures to include a description of forms of discrimination that can manifest in the university environment, and to ensure that the university’s response to notice of discrimination including national origin harassment on the basis of shared ancestry is consistent with Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act],” among other things, per the press release.
“It’s a significant milestone in the effort to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment and discrimination on campus,” Brandeis Center President Alyza D. Lewin told the Journal, “and I think it’s particularly significant because I think it’s first resolution issued by the Biden administration on university antisemitism … and it came in a complaint that was very clearly focused on harassment and discrimination of Jewish students for whom Zionism is an essential component of their Jewish identity. In this case––where antizionism featured so prominently––OCR expressed its concern that the university had not done enough.” Lewin also noted that it was significant that the resolution required the university to have policies protecting Jewish students on the basis of ethnicity in addition to religion. “If you target Jews on the basis of their sense of peoplehood or their heritage or their ancestry, that component, that’s also protected by Title VI,” she said.
Lewin added that the resolution was only “the beginning” and that OCR needs to make sure that the university follows through on the resolution and takes “concrete steps” to address antisemitism on campus. “This can’t just be left as empty words,” Lewin said.
Department of Education Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine E. Lhamon said in a statement, “I am grateful for the University of Vermont’s commitment to address antisemitic harassment that violates federal civil rights law. Everyone has a right to learn in an environment free from antisemitic harassment. We will be watching to be sure these students are safe.”
UVM President Suresh Garmela said in a statement, “UVM unequivocally condemns, and will not tolerate, antisemitism in any form. With today’s resolution agreement, UVM is redoubling its efforts to ensure this commitment is as tangible to the campus community as possible moving forward.”
UVM Hillel Executive Director Matt Vogel said in a statement, “The President and senior leadership’s new statements today represent tangible and accountable steps forward. We hope this ensures that no Jewish student or any student at UVM experiences discrimination or harassment because of their identity. Hillel will remain in ongoing dialogue with our university partners to ensure that antisemitism and hatred have no place on our campus. We will continue to amplify student concerns when they arise, and we echo the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine E. Lhamon’s statement that, ‘Everyone has a right to learn in an environment free from antisemitic harassment.’”
The American Jewish Committee said in a statement, “The ruling from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights made clear the University of Vermont administration fell short of living up to its Title VI obligations to investigate incidents of antisemitic harassment on campus this past fall. Unjustly targeting Jewish students for their beliefs has no place within universities or within broader American society. Once students make the courageous decision to report such incidents, universities must provide a fair and thorough investigation into these claims rather than leaving students with little information, closure, and support. Equally troublesome, as reported by the Department of Education, are the initial statements made by university leadership, which perpetuated a hostile environment for affected Jewish students. The university must do better.
“We call on UVM to take reports of antisemitic harassment seriously, investigate those allegations in a timely manner, and create transparent reporting structures for bias incidents. We hope UVM will take seriously its commitment to implement meaningful changes on campus and, in doing so, enable Jewish students to participate fully and authentically in all aspects of campus life, without fear of exclusion or retribution simply for being Jewish or Zionist.”
Another year lacking in levity, and soon another unleavened Passover will be behind us, too. The calendar has become a cruel joke of anti-climactic moments.
Three years ago, Passover coincided with the early days of a pandemic. Millenia later, a new plague had made a laughingstock out of locusts. This modern-day outbreak was especially harsh. The Angel of Death visited not first-born Egyptians, but people of all religions and nationalities, especially the elderly and those with co-morbidities and pulmonary problems. The bread of affliction became an omen of far more severe deprivations. (Ironically, there was a matzo shortage.)
Suddenly, it was not just bread that wouldn’t rise. Nearly everything stood motionless.
For a people that once made a mad-dash for Mount Sinai, Jews, like everyone else, were now hostages in their own homes. Unable to travel to family Seder tables, they became slaves to Zoom and Netflix, a bondage dependent on browsing and bandwidth.
This year’s Passover ushers in a new normal—a recovery period that adapted, improbably, to the massive social upheavals of these contagious times: variants and vaccines, riots associated with the January 6th insurrection and Black Lives Matter, the politics of identity with its humorless aversion to free speech, a war in Ukraine, an Afghanistan withdrawal, a reversal of abortion rights, and now a Donald Trump indictment.
It has been a time period inimical to balance and proportion. What we are receiving is mostly bad news, with little to celebrate. Consensus is a moon shot. In America, former President Trump is either a menace or a martyr. In Israel, the nation is either on the brink of authoritarianism or merely trying to better calibrate its checks and balances.
No breakthroughs, nothing visionary or sublime. Just more streaming channels. Even the COVID vaccine is no longer immune from doubt. Naysayers multiply. Tony Fauci is building a foxhole as a new summer home. Our first foray into artificial intelligence has taken a time out, too.
With rising inflation and a deflated future, spiking crime and mass shootings, an anemic Biden presidency and the ominous ill-tidings of a Chinese-Russian alliance, there are many reasons to take exception to American exceptionalism. And with all these stay-at-home jobs, we no longer know how to socialize, or to engage in normal mating rituals, face-to-face.
In short, we can never go back to the way things once were. And this year, especially, with all that has happened and not happened, it feels as though the world has passed over Passover. The Exodus of the ancient Hebrews from Egypt is wholly unfamiliar to most people. Hardly anyone associates the Pyramids with the slave labor supplied by Jews. (Yes, there are doubters here, too.)
It would come as a complete shock to the hectoring woke, but the Jews of the Bible are the original enslaved persons of color. Try convincing anyone on a college campus, or in an inner-city public high school, that Jews are neither all white nor all privileged. Better yet, try persuading the Black Hebrew Israelites that they are not the authentic descendants of biblical Jewry. They take it on faith that the Chosen People refers to them, and that white Jews are nothing but imposters who have pilfered the title.
More disturbingly, it’s not clear whether Passover itself is meaningful at all to Jews these days. Many may simply take a pass on the celebration. After all, Jews have become increasingly reluctant to flaunt their identity at the precise moment when receptivity to ethnic, racial and sexual difference has never been more accepted.
It’s the Passover paradox: a holiday ostensibly associated with Jewish liberation now must contend with an era when Jews seem to be less free—in spite of all the canards about Jewish cultural power.
It’s the Passover paradox: a holiday ostensibly associated with Jewish liberation now must contend with an era when Jews seem to be less free—in spite of all the canards about Jewish cultural power.
Think I am exaggerating? Given the global incidence of antisemitic violence, many Jews who are not Hasidic are afraid to wear any sartorial insignia outing them as Jews. These days, sightings of burkas in secular settings denote religious tolerance; a yarmulka, however, is an invitation to rumble. In Europe, Jews know to avoid the matches of certain soccer teams, like Holland’s Ajax, where drunken Jew-haters enjoy the comradery more than the game itself.
And, of course, Jews by and large don’t feel free to voice support for Israel. Certainly not on campus, or on mainstream media, or at a Reform Synagogue, or even at far too many Shabbat dinners that devolve into Israel bashing long before the traditional benching.
Jewish presence in the Democratic Party is becoming more uncomfortable, especially if having a Jewish identity or conscience is important. Israel is no longer a bi-partisan prerogative. For the first time, polling shows that Democrats are now more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis. Jewish political leaders who consider themselves liberals—either elected or those who lead legacy organizations—such as they are, have made things worse.
Bernie Sanders is the poster-boy for Jewish betrayal. Other Jewish lawmakers are so fearful of losing their seats to someone to their left, they’ll make common cause, and recite any slander with any progressive who promises an endorsement.
And, of course, it’s much more dire for the Jews of Europe—especially in Paris, London, Brussels and Stockholm. The appalling indifference that American Jews have toward this Diaspora in distress, or perhaps the overall ignorance to their plight, is a plague unto itself.
So, with Passover upon us, it is fair to ask: What is the quality of this freedom Jews are now left with? Have we traded in one bondage for another? Remaining afraid and threatened in a continuously hostile world, after thousands of years of persecution, is hardly an achievement. Surely, Moses had more favorable expectations. Instead, cynicism and paranoia run rampant. Perhaps today’s Jews might have looked even more skeptically at Moses’ signs and wonders. “Let my people go!” But to where? Will the plagues follow? Will all the seas part, or just the Red one? With hindsight, many might say: “If this is liberation, take me back to Sinai. And can I buy a Golden Calf on Amazon?”
Don’t be surprised when you open the door to welcome Elijah into your home. This time he might actually be visible, and decline to step inside.
Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself.”
The multitalented Daniel Lobell is back on the podcast! Since we last spoke with him, he’s turned his Fair Enough Comic Book into a podcast, and his documentary “Reconquistador” will have a special showing with a live Q&A in Los Angeles on Wednesday, April 26 at 7:30 p.m.
Kadeish – The Kiddish
Because if you’re doing any Jewish thing that
doesn’t start with wine, it may not be legitimate.
Urchatz – Wash
We Jews had our pandemic protocols
centuries before we needed to.
Karpas – Spring Vegetable
Ideally, straight from the farmer’s market.
Dipped in salt water so we get the
freshness of the new season and the
sadness of our past, all at once.
Yachatz – Divide
Matzah, divided in half, hidden for later.
Enough for everyone! I think it’s just a trick
so no one has to eat an entire piece
of Matzah.
Maggid – The Story
Who can retell?
We can retell.
In fact we’re mandated to.
Every detail.
Our favorite movie.
We watch it every year.
We’re the stars.
Rochtzah – Wash
Because we’re hypochondriacs
we do this a second time. Even though
we just washed four steps ago.
My hands are still wet.
Motzi Matzah – Eating Matzah
Nothing says get out of town quick
like unleavened bread. It’s ironic
it cooks so fast and passes so slow.
Maror – Bitter Herbs
It’s bitter but we like it.
Our modern palate prefers things
with flavor, even if they burn
like life before we were free.
Koreich – Hillel Sandwich
We mix the tastes of slavery and freedom
so they blend together and we
lose the difference. Like a little Purim
in our mouth.
Shulchan Oreich – Meal
It’s a festive one with pillows and soup.
Half of our people don’t make it past this point.
I’m wondering if you’ll bother reading the
last four stanzas of this poem.
Tzafun – Desert
Of course, there’s dessert.
The seder is long and we are not savages.
That matzah we broke earlier (if anyone can find it)
will be the last thing you taste tonight.
Bareich – Grace After Meals
Our whole thing is to
bless a thing
do the thing
be thankful for the thing.
That’s our thing!
Hallel – Psalms of Praise
This is where the inexpensive goat comes in.
Though in today’s money, two zuzim
wouldn’t get you a portion of goat cheese.
And the conversation about how to quantify
a human soul continues.
Nirtzah – Conclusion
Even long things must come to an end.
But if you book far enough in advance
you can do it again next year
in Jerusalem.
Los Angeles poet Rick Lupert created the