By By Rabbi-Cantor Cheri Weiss
This may be a particularly challenging Passover for Jews around the world to celebrate. On this holiday – the most popular one in the Jewish calendar – we retell the story of our ancestors’ escape from Egyptian bondage into freedom. We gather with our families and friends around the Seder table. We bless God, who has provided us with the good fortune to eat matzah, maror, charoset, karpas, and other symbolic ritual foods, along with the rest of our festive meal. We drink four glasses of wine or grape juice (again blessing God). We kvell as our children chant the Four Questions, beginning each question with, “Mah nishtana halaila hazeh mi-kol haleilot?” (“Why is this night different from all other nights?”). And we jubilantly sing songs such as Echad Mi Yodea (Who Knows One), Dayenu (It Would Have Been Enough) and Chad Gadya (One Little Goat).
Yet in the midst of our joy, how can we not feel sadness for those who are still suffering halfway across the globe? Many of the Israeli hostages remain in captivity more than a year and a half post-capture. Too many lives have been lost in this horrible, protracted war for us to ignore. So, is it still acceptable for us to find joy in Passover while so many others suffer?
In the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum archives, there is a webpage dedicated to a photo display of Jews observing Passover during World War II: https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/passover/index.asp. On this webpage, we can see photos depicting a Passover Seder in a Polish hospital in 1941; Jews celebrating the holiday in the Warsaw Ghetto; baking matzah in hiding in Lodz, Poland in 1943, in France in 1943, in Hungary in 1944; a Seder for Jewish Allied soldiers.
It seems almost incomprehensible that in many of these photos, people are smiling as they look into the camera. In the middle of The Holocaust – the most tragic period in Jewish history – people found ways to celebrate Passover and continue its traditions. Perhaps it was in defiance of their circumstances that they were determined to honor their heritage and the Torah commandment to retell the story of our people’s liberation from oppression and bondage to their children and each other: “And you shall tell your child on that day, ‘It is because of what God did for me when I went free from Egypt.’ ” (Exodus 13:8)
Perhaps we can find meaningful ways to remember those who are still in captivity and/or grieving their losses by incorporating some new symbols or rituals into our Seder this year. Consider setting a special, unoccupied place at your Seder table to acknowledge the not-yet-released hostages and observe a minute of silence. During the reading of the ten plagues, we dip our finger into the wine or juice to remove a drop from our cups for each plague, signifying a decrease in our joy to recognize the suffering of the Egyptians during this time. Perhaps at our Seder this year, we can dip our finger yet once more, in solidarity with our people still suffering the plague of prolonged captivity.
You may also find or develop other meaningful rituals at your Seder that acknowledge the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza. While these may be simply symbolic gestures, it is incumbent upon us to keep these hostages in our hearts and prayers this Passover. May we, our children, and future generations of Jews continue telling the story of our people’s liberation from oppression and bondage for generations to come.
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