Yom Ha’ … What Starts with Haggadah Doesn’t End with Haggadah

Yom Ha’ …

It was the last morning of Pesach, I was sitting at the table with my grandchildren, spreading butter on matzah, when one of them asked, “Saba, does Pesach have to end?” Still in a haggadahing state of mind, I responded, “Actually, Pesach isn’t ending at all, because …”

Chapter I.

… because Pesach isn’t the end of the story, it is just the beginning, and to be precise, it isn’t even the beginning. At the Seder we mark the Exodus from Egypt and the birth of the Jewish nation. We commemorate that seminal, history altering event by reading a combination story and guidebook called the Haggadah—The Telling—and that sets the tone for what is truly the rest of the story.

At the heart of the Seder experience is the message that there is nothing static about our collective existence. We are—in the essential fabric of our being—a shared, ongoing, unfolding, multi-chaptered story. We don’t just gather to recall and recount a once-upon-a-time tale of yore; we are the story, and through us, it continues to be written.

The Haggadah tells us that the first chapter in the great story of our people is called Avraham—“And I took your ancestor Avraham from the other side of the river”—and Chapter II, called Sojourn in Egypt, is comprised of sub-stories called Slavery, Redemption, and Crossing of the Sea.

Chapter III. From the Sea to the Land

While the portion of our epic saga told in the Haggadah concludes with the crossing of the sea, the story doesn’t end there. Chapter three, From the Sea to the Land, covers forty years of travels in the desert and culminates with a story called Joshua and the Promised Land.

Chapter IV. From the Jordan to Jerusalem

Chapter four, I told the kids, spans twelve hundred years and includes sub-stories called Conquering and Settling, First Temple Glory, Second Temple Not So Glory, and finally, Destruction and Exile.

Chapter V. From Exile to Jerusalem

As I haggadahed on, they seemed to be listening, or perhaps just politely humoring ol’ Saba. Regardless, I continued and said that chapter five spans two millennia and includes sub-stories called Rashi and the Middle Ages, Scattering and Scholarship, Ghettos and Pogroms, Along Came Zionism, and finally, Holocaust.

Chapter VI. Return and Rebirth

Chapter five ended with the human ashes of the Holocaust scattered across Europe, as did a thousand years of Jewish life and history, but once again, the story was far from over. Something startling arose from those ashes.

For 2,000 years, Jews everywhere prayed for and dreamt of returning to the land of Israel, yet that’s all it was, a dim and distant dream. And then our tormented story shifted.

In 1900, the 50,000 Jews living in the Turkish occupied land of Israel represented less than one half of one percent of world Jewry. The notion of Jewish sovereignty, of a Jewish army, a Jewish seat at the United Nations, a Jewish country to absorb threatened and abused Jews, and of Israel as the thriving hub of Torah scholarship and spirituality for Jews everywhere, was, to most, but a fantasy.

Today that fantasy is reality. In the course of a century, the long-awaited ingathering of the exiles happened. In that time, the Jewish population grew by 7,000% (bet your stocks never did that well), and today the 7.3 million Jews of Israel represent over half of world Jewry. If the Diaspora was a company, and its communities were franchises, then we would say that for the last century the Diaspora has been going out of business, just like we prayed it would. Today there remains just one last great center of Diaspora Jews, the United States, where eight out of ten exiled Jews are still standing at the boarding gate of history.

Everything about the relationship between God and the Jewish nation takes place within history, and though we are frequently left perplexed, wounded, and deeply troubled by how events unfold—and how stories and chapters are written—we always live with the awareness of, “This is surely from God, it is an astonishing wonder in our eyes.” (Psalms 118)

The creation of the State of Israel on the fifth of Iyar 1948 totally altered the course of Jewish history. Like every other story in our collective book of astonishing wonders, the return and rebirth of the nation of Israel, upon the land of Israel, in the State of Israel, is surely from God, though not only from God. Just like people toil to make a living, or for any other achievement, and thank God for His Divine assistance, the same is true when it comes to the remarkable creation, building, and ongoing blossoming of Israel.

Chapter VII: Six Days, Jerusalem, and Birthright

Some look at the Six Day War and the restoration of Jerusalem as the beginning of a new chapter, others see it as a sub-story in chapter six, Return and Rebirth. It seems to me those six days opened a new chapter. In any case, when the words “The Temple Mount is in our hands” were uttered, history dramatically shifted.

Today in America, it’s taken for granted that almost all young Orthodox Jews will spend a year or two studying in Jerusalem after high school. Many spend another year or two in Israel after marriage, and many families regularly travel to Israel for holidays, trips, and solidarity missions. As a result of the capture of the Old City and the Kotel, once again, after two thousand years, Jerusalem and Israel became the great center that all Orthodox Jews look to for irreplaceable spiritual inspiration. That’s no small thing, that’s historic.

Similarly, today in America, it’s taken for granted that all Jewish college students are entitled to a free Birthright trip to Israel. The creation of Birthright was a game changer, and its impact on tens of thousands of young people, and on the American Jewish community, is enormous.

Without the creation of the State of Israel, and without the six-day victory that opened the door to Jerusalem, there is no telling what American Jewry would look like today. Jewish life in Israel, most obviously, and in America and wherever Jews are found, is profoundly, uniquely, deeply, and indelibly shaped and elevated by the existence of the State of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital.

Interlude: From the Ten Commandments to Today and Tomorrow

When God first introduced Himself to the Jewish nation, the first thing He said was, “I am Hashem your God who took you out of Egypt.” That’s nice, but a bit perplexing. No question, the Exodus was a big deal, but you would think that in that grand moment of revelation God would have hung His hat on the biggest deal of all, creation. Wouldn’t “I am Hashem your God, creator of the heavens and the earth” have been an even more monumental intro? Why the modesty?

It seems that God wanted the Jewish people to know that the essence and meaning of their relationship would be most manifest, not in His celestial grandeur, but via His role in the life of the Jewish nation, on the real-world stage of geopolitical events.

And so that’s what I meant when I told our grandchildren that Pesach wasn’t ending.

Pesach didn’t end two weeks ago because though our retelling of  a chapter called Sojourn in Egypt did end, the story itself not only continued, but is still very much alive and dynamic; it’s unfolding in front of our eyes and beneath our feet, and particularly here in Israel, we are always immersed in how this chapter, and others to come, will yet be written.

October 7^th and Unity: Chapter VIII (?)

When we went to sleep on October 6^th 2023, we had no idea that our world was about to change.

It’s too early to know, but it seems likely that history will read October 7^th as the opening story in a new chapter, our chapter.

Today in Israel, everywhere you go, countless stickers adorn almost every public surface; lamp posts, park benches, bus stops, soda machines, you name it. Each of these stickers bears the image of a fallen soldier, and each has a short quote by or about that person. On Novemeber 24^th 2024, thirty-year-old reservist Omer Galdor fell in Lebanon leaving behind his wife Adi, three-year-old Neta, and eight-month-old Aloma. Next to the smiling face on his sticker are the words, “Ima, (Mom) I’m treading in history!”

Indeed: Treading in history—within history—making history, praying history, living, dying, singing, fighting for and shaping history. In this history molding moment, that’s who and where we are.

In some mind-boggling way, once again, out of the human ashes of that black Shabbat horror, God Willing, a whole new story about a whole new era of Jewish brotherhood and rebirth will continue to be written, though in most ways, that part of the story is completely up to us.

… so, less than a week before Yom HaShoah, and two weeks before Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut, as they spread butter and jelly on their matzah, that’s what I haggadahed to our grandchildren, and you know what, they may have been listening.