Compassion of Passover should inspire hope
The celebration is a poignant reminder that enslavement in all its forms is bound to be overcome by the light of deliverance
At the heart of the Passover Seder is the haunting probing of “Ma Nishtana … How different is this night from all other nights?”
This historic Rabbinic quest is designed for us to grasp Passover’s meaning throughout the generational chain in the context of changing and always challenging times. It is traditionally sung by the youngest attending child, to mitigate the seriousness of the inquiry surrounding the complex poles of enslavement and freedom in the Jewish consciousness as well as human experience.
Surely at this beclouded Passover Festival, the plague of the coronavirus is casting ominous darkness not only on one people as with the punitive 10 plagues upon Pharaoh’s Egypt for freedom’s sake and slavery’s denouncement. Pharaoh was forewarned time and again to let Moses’ people go.
Now there is a global attack by a stealthy adversary exposing the entire interdependent human family to the Angel of Death’s whims. All that in the midst of a complacent post-modern high technology society. We are tempted by the hubris of false invincibility, plunging us to a debilitating sense of primeval vulnerability, threatening our accustomed and enviable American way of life and its underlying essential democracy.
Ultimately the Passover celebration is a poignant reminder that enslavement in its destructive variety — physically, spiritually and psychologically — is bound to be overcome by the light of deliverance, replacing virus with virtue, pain with promise and violence with vision. We need someone of the stature of Biblical Joseph who saved the Egyptian empire from a consuming famine, to organize and prepare our lacking American superpower and the world-at-large (we are truly a global village with porous borders) to respond constructively to the present calamity and future ones.
Let not the bitter lessons of this trying pandemic, akin to being confined in a Twilight Zone, be lost on us, even as we cherish the sacrificial angels of the first respondents, medical teams, grieving families and friends, along with all those engaged in acts of loving-kindness. The plague they are heroically fighting will yet pass over.
This is not the first time that the Jewish people have been blamed for human misfortunes. During the14th century in Medieval Christian Europe, the Jews were held responsible for the Black Plague, though ironically proper hygiene of washing hands was part and parcel of religious Jewish observance. All humans have now become terrorized Jews by a coronavirus that does not discriminate. Today, sadly, Asians have joined us as targets for vilification.
At this season’s Seder table, those who are fortunate to safely conduct it, should diminish from the cup of joyful salvation in addition to the 10 drops for the 10 plagues upon ancient Egypt for the sin of Hebrew enslavement, one drop for the current heavy human loses and intense suffering. The inspiring Exodus journey from servitude to an oppressor to service of the most high, became a model of liberation for the human family, culminating in the Messianic vision of a world transformed.
We have chosen to convert the bitter herbs of our exile into the sweet charoset of homecoming for all. It is the symbolic hovering presence at the Seder table of the prophet Elijah for whom we open the door and set aside a special cup of wine, which provides for the eternal flame of universal shalom’s healing, hope and harmony. It is the peace we have kept alive as a flickering light in history’s darkness.
Passover’s promise by a compassionate heritage is ultimately rooted in its revolutionary view of the infinite worth of each of the creator’s children, recalling that God silenced the heavenly angels when jubilant at the drowning of Pharaoh’s troops. When we particularly preserve our adversary’s humanity, difficult as it is, we maintain our own essential human stature, even as we are commanded to rise up against evil. Passover’s soaring spirit of renewal of a people as well as an individual, also applies to the natural order of springtime’s reassuring return with the beauty of the Earth’s budding and recovery that we are pledged to forever secure.
Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman is the founder of Temple Lev Tikvah (Heart of Hope) which meets at The Church of the Holy Apostles in Virginia Beach. He is Honorary Senior Rabbi Scholar at Eastern Shore Chapel Episcopal Church.