Jewish American Heritage Month » A Seat at the Table, a Prayer for Freedom Local Rabbis Share Passover 2024 Messages

Posted By admin on April 20, 2024

How do we as Jews gather at our seder tables when the hostage situation by Passover may be unresolved?

Let My people go that they may celebrate a festival for Me in the wilderness Exodus 5:1.

Have any words ever sounded more profound and relevant than they do right now.

By the time the sun sets on the first seder, if they are still in Gaza, some 134 hostages, whether they be alive or dead, will have been held hostage for 198 days.

Perhaps the themes of Passover, the Festival of Freedom, have never felt more meaningful, painful or relevant in our most recent memory as they do right now.

After almost seven months of holding vigils for the hostages both physically and spiritually, how do we as Jews gather at our seder tables when the hostage situation by Passover may be unresolved? How do we commemorate this holiday while our brethren remain enslaved in captivity?

Perhaps Passover will feel a bit different this year because it may be the first in our lifetimes when we are living through history. But through the centuries, Jews have sat at their seders and celebrated Passover in many instances of persecution.

Local rabbis have ruminated about the notion that Passover may come without a return of the hostages. Several say it has been on their minds for months as they reflected on how this will change the timbre of our seders and Passover observances.

Pesach in Times of Trouble

Rabbi Benzion Geisinsky of Chabad of Bloomfield Hills reminded that this is not the first time in Jewish history that Jews have observed Passover in times of persecution and existential threat.

Geisinsky pointed to a piece in the April 2020 issue of Moment magazine. Compiled in the early days of the COVID pandemic, it contained examples of how Jews celebrated Passover under Babylonian and Roman exiles, Crusades and the European Black Death.

Survivors of the Inquisition, Jews held seder not on the first two nights but on the fifth nights in communities in Spain, Portugal and Sicily and Sardinia, ironically helped by their Christian neighbors, is one example from centuries ago.

While Im sure the discussions around the Passover table were very different in times of persecution and troubles than during happy times, the words of the Haggadah stayed the same, Geisinsky said. Certainly, during the most horrific times in our history the words of vehee sheamda (that which refers to our ancestors applies to us as well) were very relevant.

Jewish American Heritage Month » A Seat at the Table, a Prayer for Freedom Local Rabbis Share Passover 2024 Messages – The Jewish News (2024)