Passover One Year Later: Toward A New Promised Land
We're not there yet, but we've learned to adapt and we have reason to hope.
Passover themes: Each year, four cups of wine. This year, in addition: resilience, humility, community and faith.
On the eve of Passover last year I imagined that if the Prophet Elijah showed up at my door Seder night, I would have no choice but to greet him by saying, “Welcome -- but please step back and put on a mask.”
This year, having been fortunate enough to be fully vaccinated, I feel I could usher Elijah in and have him join us at the seder table.
Indoors.
Unmasked.
Hallelujah.
It’s true that we still haven’t reached the Promised Land, but unlike a year ago, we have reason for hope in the months ahead. Cautious, but looking forward.
What a difference a year has made in our lives. Especially a year like no other. As the spring of 2020 was blooming all around us, we retreated to our homes, in lockdown and frightened of a plague we knew little about other than that it was mysterious and lethal.
Last Passover at our seders -- many of us for the first time without close relatives to share the experience -- we related on a deeper level to how the Jews of Egypt must have felt on the eve of their redemption. They were huddled in their dark places, not knowing what to expect as the Lord passed over them, leaving no Egyptian home free from suffering.
Who among us did not wonder, as well, about our fate? Which of our loved ones would be stricken, we worried. Who would be spared?
In the Haggadah, our sages make reference to the four descriptions of how God took the Jewish people out of Egypt “with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, with great awesomeness and with signs and wonders”(Deut. 26:8)
The number four is a constant at the seder. There are the Four Cups of Wine. Four Questions, and Four Children to ask them. Looking back, I think of 2020 as consisting of four stages: confusion, fear, adaptation and then steadfastness. Covid came to us suddenly and with ferocity at this time of year. But over the succeeding months we gradually came to accept that we were in for the long haul and found creative ways to cope. Through Zoom classes and synagogue services as well as shiva visits and wedding celebrations. And with it all, we struggled with heavy hearts to grasp the enormity of the losses we suffered as a nation and as a society and as individuals -- neighbors, friends, loved ones.
This year the Haggadah story, familiar as it is to us, will once again take on new meaning in light of its age-old yet ever-timely themes. Among them are oppression, slavery, redemption and freedom. Many of us who thought our country had made great strides in dealing with racism over the last 50 years were confronted with the reality of unarmed black men and women killed by white police officers. The image and sound of George Floyd gasping “I can’t breathe” -- literal for him and symbolic of how so many others feel -- still echo within us.
American history will look back on 2020 as the Year of Covid and of the most volatile and divisive of presidential elections. If there is a common thread that connects those two epic crises that call for new ways to prevent their recurrence, it is that we must learn to face with courage, head on, the challenges that hard realities present.
Last week, Andres Spokoiny, the president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, described the theme and goal of the group’s virtual international conference as seeking to connect “the elements of resilience, humility and community.” He noted that “community makes us resilient; humility allows us to recognize that we are lost and reach out to others, so as to build a better future.” His hope, he told the 650 virtual attendees, was for “a resilience of transformation” that was not about returning to the status quo of the past but to “create something new out of the crucible of this crisis.”
His message resonated with me, and in keeping with the theme of four associated with Passover, I would add to resilience, humility and community … faith.
The Exodus narrative — indeed, the story of the Jewish People — is rooted in faith in a brighter future.
After reciting the Haggadah at our seders, we end by calling out, “Next Year In Jerusalem,” affirming an aspiration that not only invokes physically being in Israel but celebrating the holiday in a more peaceful world, perhaps even a Messianic one.
For now, I’m just so grateful to celebrate this Passover with more family, more appreciation and more hope than last year. And I wish you the same.
Chag sameach.
Wonderful piece. Thank you for sharing your reflections and insights