Dear TBZ Community:
This year I entered Passover with a heavy heart and a full mind – I imagine many of you did as well. How can we celebrate freedom and oppression at this time? As I wrote last week in my Shabbat N’kabla message, this Pesach is different from any other. Much of the liturgy of our seder felt real and painful, but also necessary. I shared at my seder that this year Pesach feels like a must do, as a need to, as an obligation, as a commandment that can not be skipped or taken for granted. This year, Pesach is needed more than ever. Why? Because Pesach teaches us that we don’t give up and that the journey of Egypt is a complex one. Pesach tells us that we will walk out from slavery, from oppression. We, as a humanity, are capable of this and we are not alone… even when it feels like we might be alone, God is with us.
Through chol ha’moed (intermediary days of Passover), I have tried to remind myself of this teaching, especially as we read about the events unfolding on college campuses, such as Columbia University and Harvard; and especially as we watch the video of Hersh Godlberg-Polin, one of the hostages who was taken by Hamas on October 7th and who remains in captivity. I celebrate this holiday not just as a “joyful holiday,” but as a response to this moment: to not let despair be what defines us, not let fear be what defines us, not to give up.
On Sunday night and Monday we will celebrate the seventh day of Pesach. On this day we read the verses in the Torah from Exodus 13:17 to 15:26, including the crossing of the sea and Shirat Ha-Yam (Song of the Sea).
There is a well-known midrash (exegesis, story) about the Song of the Sea and how the rabbis imagine God’s response: When the people of Israel erupt in dancing and singing after crossing the sea, the midrash tells us that the angels in heavens also joined the celebration. At that moment God stopped the angels saying:
אָמַר הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא: מַעֲשֵׂה יָדַי טוֹבְעִין בַּיָּם, וְאַתֶּם אוֹמְרִים שִׁירָה?
“The work of My hands, the Egyptians, are drowning at sea, and you wish to say songs? (Talmud Bavli, Megillah 10b)
This midrash is so powerful and radical, and it feels so relevant and incredibly important at this time: God cries for all God’s children. God saves the people of Israel from oppression and, at the same time, God does not celebrate the suffering of the Egyptians. What is most important for me here, is that God does both. God holds complexity. Saving the people of Israel, liberating them from bondage, and holding the pain and the suffering of the Egyptians.
At our seder, which includes many children asking many questions, one of the children asked: what happened to the Egyptians after? That question left me thinking and realizing, we don’t really know. At least not at that point. We move on from the story, because our pain is so great that it is hard to look back. But this midrash says something else, it tells us that God did look back, God did know this was not so simple.
Rabbi Shai Held, in an op-ed in the New York Times this past week, reminded us that the radical message of Passover is that our response to suffering is not indifference but love. He writes:
Suffering can teach us love, but all too often we let it teach us apathy and indifference — or, worse, unbridled rage and hostility. Our afflictions harden us, turn our focus stubbornly inward, make our most aggressive impulses seem both necessary and justified. We come to feel entitled: I was oppressed, and no one championed my cause; I don’t owe anything to anyone. But the Bible encourages us to take the opposite tack: I was oppressed, and no one came to my aid; therefore I will never abandon someone vulnerable or in pain.
Or, in other words, as I wrote last week: “As we engage in the exercise of remembering our people’s suffering, past and present, our tradition boldly says: our response to suffering is not to close our doors but to open them.”
That is what I think the midrash is about. It tells us that God was able to hold both and it demands from us to do the same. To hold the complexity of suffering and love, of responding to fear and despair with compassion and open doors. It is truly sad, disconcerting, and upsetting to see that the loudest voices right now are those who hold a simplistic binary on suffering. I know that more than ever it is important to continue to both hold and cry for the suffering of my people, for the Jewish people, for the people of Israel, for the hostages yet to be released, for the families of those displaced in Israel, for all those who have suffered an unspeakable trauma on October 7th and in the months since; and here, not far from us, for those encountering antisemitism on their college campuses, and all who fear. But the story doesn’t end there: I will also cry, pray, and act for the innocent people in Gaza who have died, and all those who have been displaced and lost their homes, and for the end of a war that is costing too many lives, and against all hatred.
At the end of the Song of the Sea, we will read about Miriam and the women taking their timbrels to dance. What I find beautiful is to realize that the women had the foresight to pack up their timbrels, their instruments, their tools for hope. On the same night when they did not have enough time to bake bread, when they prepared for a scary and unknown journey, they knew to pack the instruments. They knew we would cross the sea, they knew the oppression would end, they knew not to give up on hope. They packed hope with them, they prepared for it and did not give up. Neither will we.
May this Shabbat bring blessings and consolation to all of you and your loved ones. May we find strength, courage, and patience, and open our hearts with generosity. May all those who are ill find healing.
And may the hostages soon be returned to their families and friends; may the Israeli and Palestinian peace workers in the land continue their sacred work and not be deterred or turn away from the vision of peace and dignity for all.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach (Happy Holiday),
Rav Claudia