Haggadah Passover

Dear Friend,

When we asked our readers what they want most in a traditional Haggadah, the answer almost always centered around one idea:

I need it to talk to me.

I want a traditional Haggadah, but I need to understand what is going on and what we are supposed to do at each step.

Most of all, I need to get how this ancient Haggadah is telling the story of Passover in a way that is relevant to me.

We worked hard to fill that order. And we’re proud to say we did it and it works.

As one reader wrote:

“My guests were no longer confused or bored. They were reading, discussing, and thoroughly engaged...

We all discovered that a deep and powerful story had been hiding inside the traditional Haggadah all these years in plain sight!”

It’s also beautiful, written in clear, simple English, and as easy as possible to use for beginners and pros alike.

Click here https://www.chabad.org/generic_cdo/aid/5075231/jewish/The-Chabadorg-Haggadah.htm
for a free download of this Haggadah as well as options to purchase it in hard and softcover editions.

With best wishes for a kosher and happy Passover!

The Chabad.org Team

https://aish.com/jewish-identity-are-you-in-or-out/?src=ac
Identifying as a Jew
by Sara Yoheved Rigler
Our Sages assert that the Israelites in Egypt were on the lowest level of spiritual impurity. They worshipped idols. They were debauched and dissolute. So how did they merit the grand and miraculous redemption?

They had only three things going for them: They kept their Hebrew names, their Hebrew language, and their distinctive Hebrew dress. In other words, they retained their Jewish identity.

Wait a second! Didn’t you cringe when you found out that the biggest Ponzi scheme in history had been perpetuated by someone with a distinctly Jewish name? Wouldn’t we have preferred that instead of retaining his Jewish identity he had changed his name to Christopher Johnson?

What is the redemptive value of Jewish identity?

The question assumes particular importance in our generation. Indeed, the rates of adultery, domestic violence, addiction to drugs and porn, and murder for reasons as trifling as being cut off in traffic have skyrocketed in this generation. An objective look at our moral standing would produce a grim assessment.

Judaism promulgates a teleological worldview – that history is moving toward a specific goal, namely, the Redemption, or the Messianic era. So how can a generation as dissolute as ours be redeemed?

The Power of Community
Maimonides, in his code of Jewish Law, makes a startling pronouncement. He writes that a Jew who lives in isolation from the Jewish community, even if he keeps all the commandments, is considered a kofer b’ikar, a heretic. The implication is that identifying with the Jewish community is a basic value that underlies all the commandments.

The challenge to identify as a Jew or not became a viable choice in the 19th century, as the ghetto walls came down. During the 19th and early 20th century, huge numbers of Jews defected. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the majority of Warsaw’s most affluent Jews converted to Christianity. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1867 and 1918, about 20,000 Jews converted to Christianity to rid themselves of the social stigma of being Jewish. (Gustav Mahler is the most famous example; he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1897 in order to snag the post of Conductor of the Viennese Opera.)

Many Jewish immigrants en route to America from Eastern Europe threw their tefillin into the New York harbor because they wanted to eschew their Jewish identity and become “Americans.” In contrast to the ancient Hebrews in Egypt, who retained their Hebrew names and language, many Jewish immigrants changed their names. The film Hester Street about life on the lower East Side has a scene in a class for ballroom dancing. The sign on the wall proclaims: NO YIDDISH SPOKEN HERE.

In our generation, many Jews have renounced their Jewish identity in favor of becoming “citizens of the world.” Their political views have led them to identify with the enemies of the Jewish People.

Since 1948, the benchmark of Jewish identification in America has been, more than synagogue affiliation, support of the Jewish State. Rabbi Nachman Kahana remembers that when he was a teenager in New York in 1948, he helped raise funds to buy arms for the Jewish fighters in what was soon to be the State of Israel. Their truck would stop at a street corner, they would jump out, and two of them would hold an Israeli flag horizontally. Passers-by would reach into their pockets, and without even looking, throw everything they had into the flag. This enthusiastic support of Israel was unwavering in the American Jewish community until the last decade.

That’s why alarm bells rang a couple years ago when a study revealed that 50% of American Jews under the age of 35 would not consider it “a personal tragedy if the State of Israel ceased to exist.” Two months ago an American Congresswoman declared that the Jews of America had sold out Israel in their support of Obama’s diplomatic surrender to Iran’s nuclear program.

The minimum requirement to be redeemed is to identify as a Jew.

The nadir of this abandonment of support for Israel is the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, which actually has some Jews among its supporters. The BDS movement seeks to destroy Israel economically just as Iran seeks to destroy Israel physically. The starkest defection from the Jewish People is to side with those sworn to our destruction. According to Jewish law, every person born to a Jewish mother is Jewish, even if s/he converts to another religion. But a Jew needs to minimally cast his/her lot with the Jewish community to be redeemable.

Let’s be clear here. God wants the maximum from us Jews: love your neighbor as yourself; keep Shabbos; don’t speak lashon hara; keep kosher – the whole nine yards. But the minimum requirement to be redeemed is to identify as a Jew.

Spiritual DNA
Why should a dissolute Jew who identifies as a Jew be redeemable? Here it gets mystical. According to our sages, the Patriarchs and Matriarchs passed their spiritual DNA down to their descendants. Their spiritual achievements were not personal. In virtually every Divine revelation to the Patriarchs, God makes promises dealing with their descendants – they will be “like the stars of the heaven” and “like the sands of the seashore,” they will inherit the Land of Israel, etc. Among the promises was that God would not let a Jewish soul hit rock bottom without Divine intervention to stop his free-fall. This spiritual safety net is called, “zechut avot,” the merit of the forefathers.

According to the Midrash, at the Splitting of the Sea, the angel of Egypt protested to God that both the Hebrews and the Egyptians were idol worshippers. Why should the Hebrews be saved, and the Egyptians drowned? God answered that the Hebrews are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Zechut avot, the merit of the forefathers.

But zechut avot, like any inheritance, only becomes yours if you claim it. Your grandfather can bequeath you a bank account worth a million dollars, but if don’t show up at the lawyer’s office and identify yourself as Jake Levy’s grandson, you won’t have access to his fortune. If you don’t actively identify as a Jew, you can’t inherit the precious fortune of zechut avot.

Passover poses the challenge to every Jew: Are you in or are you out?

Zechut avot is like a skydiver’s reserve chute. If the main parachute fails to open, and the skydiver is falling at 120 mph, she can be saved by the reserve chute. But only if she pulls the cord! The cord that activates the merit of the forefathers is Jewish identity.

Jewish identity is what prompted Kirk Douglas to fast every Yom Kippur. As he proudly stated, “I might be making a film, but I fasted.”

Jewish identity is what prompted Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to post a large silver mezuzah on the doorpost of her Supreme Court chambers.

Jewish identity is what prompted movie star Scarlet Johansson to stand up for Israel at the cost of her prestige as an Oxfam ambassador.

The Passover Seder speaks about four sons. Only one of them is cast as “wicked.” As the Hagaddah states: “The wicked son, what does he say? ‘What is this service to you?’ ‘To you,’ but not to him. Because he excludes himself from the community, he is a heretic. … Say to him, ‘Because of what God did for me when I went out of Egypt.’ For me, but not for him, because if he would have been there, he would not have been redeemed.”

The first Passover marked the birth of the Jewish nation. Every Passover since poses the challenge to every Jew: Are you in or are you out?

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Tabernacles - Passover - Similarities
Passover -
the Time of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus

There are eight days of the Passover Season plus a 9th Day (not one of God's appointed times) added by the Jewish people. The season of Passover begins with the Lord's Passover on Nisan 13/14. This day is not included as one of the seven days of Passover. It is the date the Passover Lamb is killed between the evenings in preparation for the 1st of seven days of Passover - Nisan 14/15. The first of the seven days of Passover is the date death did first passover in the land of Egypt at midnight on Nisan 14 before the morning of Nisan 15 when the Hebrews left Egypt - Numbers 33:3.

KJV Exodus 12:3
Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month (Nisan 10)

(Nisan 10 was the weekly Saturday Sabbath at the time the Hebrews were being freed from bondage in Egypt and it was the weekly Saturday Sabbath when Jesus presented Himself as the Passover Lamb in Jerusalem - John 12.)

they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house:

KJV Exodus 12:6
And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: (Nisan 14)

and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening (between the evenings).

(Nisan 14 - Wednesday when the Hebrews left Egypt and Wednesday the year of the death of Jesus, the Passover Lamb was killed. Jesus died on Wednesday at 3 PM, April 3, 30 AD just 3 hours before the Annual High Sabbath of the first day of Passover. Nisan 14 is also the date that begins the seven days of unleavened bread. Jesus was selected as the Passover Lamb on March 30, 30 AD - Nisan 10 - John 12 - the weekly Saturday Sabbath.)

The first of seven days of unleavened bread begins on Nisan 14 when leaven is removed from the house in preparation for the seven days of unleavened bread from Nisan 14 until Nisan 21. The days of unleavened bread begin on Nisan 14 and end at 6 PM when Nisan 20 ends and Nisan 21 begins.

KJV Exodus 12:15
Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.

KJV Exodus 12:18
In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, (Nisan 14) ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even (until Nisan 21).

Passover Lamb

Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household... The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Exodus 12:3; 5-6

Passover Lamb

Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household... The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Exodus 12:3; 5-6

When I was on the farm growing up, I once helped take care of a little lamb. Cute, warm and fuzzy, he captured and melted my heart. I loved to hug him and feel his soft, white fleece. This precious lamb was the picture of innocence. You can imagine my horror on the day he was taken to the slaughter house!

For Passover preparations, God wanted a family to choose a lamb, bring it into their house, and take care of it for four whole days before killing it. How awful! They were required to slaughter the little lamb they had grown to love. This heart-wrenching sacrifice demonstrated the exacting demands of God's justice, as well as how destructive and awful sin really is. It was the perfect background to "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). God wants our hearts to sincerely break over the sacrifice of His perfect Lamb. We were the ones who put Jesus Christ to death. Our sin led Him to the slaughter. It leads us to grief and repentance.

* * * * * * *

A Passover lamb was the picture of innocence, but the Lamb of God is the perfect picture of righteousness. Isaiah 53:7 says "... he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth." Meditate on how a lamb is a biblical "type" of the life of Christ. Remember, Jesus went to His cross as your sacrificial lamb.

Jesus, thank you for being the Lamb who bore my sins!

Blessings,

Joni and Friends
www.joniandfriends.org

https://aish.com/passovers-7-steps-to-personal-freedom/?src=ac
by Rabbi Dr. Yitzchak A. Breitowitz
April 3, 2024
How to break free from your internal subjugation.

Passover commemorates the dramatic exodus of the Jews from Egypt after a sojourn of 210 years. The centrality of this experience in Jewish life cannot be overstated. There is a commandment to recount and remember the Exodus every day of the year, morning and evening. In Friday night kiddush, we declare “zecher l’yetzeat mitzraim” – in commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt. The annual Passover Seder is the most beloved and celebrated Jewish ritual. For over 3000 years, it has been a primary vehicle for the transmission of our history, our values, and our heritage to our children. As a multimedia pedagogical experience, it has yet to be surpassed.

Certainly, even Jews of minimal commitment and knowledge are conversant with the basic contours of the Exodus story. Yet there is an aspect of remembering the Exodus that is often overlooked. Slavery takes many forms. There is indeed the obvious – slavery of physical persecution and oppression, but there are more subtle forms as well. One can be externally free and nevertheless enslaved to an evil within oneself — power, envy, intolerance, hatred, cruelty, selfishness, despair, and apathy are all chains that can shackle, cripple, or disable the human spirit. Especially where Jews have political freedom, it is often the internal forms of subjugation that pose the greatest threat.

A great Chassidic teacher once explained that the time-honored rituals of the Seder serve not only to commemorate our freedom from the Biblical Egypt, Mitzraim in Hebrew, which comes from the word constriction, but as a means to achieve redemption from the personal Mitzraim/constriction within each and every one of us.

Here, briefly, are seven selected aspects of the Passover Seder and their connection to attaining personal freedom:

1. Ask Questions: The Talmud makes clear that the narrative of the Haggadah must be preceded by questions. (This is of course the Ma Nishtana.) Even if one is celebrating Passover alone, these questions must be articulated. Thus, step one is achieving spiritual freedom: Be willing to ask honest questions. Don’t close the door. Be a seeker of wisdom.

2. Grow from Adversity: The Haggadah narrative must begin with the account of slavery and adversity, not with the redemption. This reminds us that even in adversity, failure, or disappointment, there lie the seeds of hope and regeneration; that often our greatest growth arises not from our successes, but from our failures and mistakes if we are courageous and perceptive enough to learn from them.

3. Bitter Herbs: Eating bitter herbs highlights the need to honestly recognize and confront these destructive aspects of behavior that are bitter and enslaving. You cannot be free of your inner slavery until you acknowledge that it exists.

4. Four cups of wine/reclining: This calls upon us to recognize that notwithstanding the bitter herbs — enslavers, we have the innate capacity and spiritual greatness, with God’s help, to become liberated. Awareness of our faults must be coupled with an equal awareness of our potential for self-improvement, goodness, and nobility of character.

5. Matzah: All flour mixed with water will become chametz if left unattended for 18 minutes. If baked before that time, however, what would have become chametz is matzah instead. This teaches us the need for decisive action. Far too often, we are momentarily inspired to make positive changes in our lives, but by failing to concretize that resolution into action, we allow the inspiration to dissipate.

6. Paschal Lamb: Of all the many sacrifices, this was the only one that could be brought only in collaboration with other people. A single individual standing alone could not bring the Passover Offering. In all our attempts to reach Godliness, we must link ourselves to the Jewish People in love and concern.

7. Intergenerational Communication: Ultimately, Judaism survives not through schools or synagogues, but through families — parent to child, child to parent — the established, indispensable formula for growth as passed down from generation to generation.

Be an honest searcher, recognize the redemptive potential even in adversity, honestly and courageously confront your faults, believe in your potential for spiritual greatness, be willing to take decisive action, inculcate within yourself a sense of love and compassion for the Jewish People, foster the bonds of intergenerational communication with your parents, your children, or both.

These seven steps may not change the world, but they will certainly enable each of us to achieve genuine personal freedom which is at the core of the Exodus experience.

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Why Did Moses Have to First Fail Before God Freed the Jews in Egypt?
Real Freedom can’t be tainted by political agendas and personal ambition.

The message of Passover is straightforward: Freedom. God worked His magic to take the Jewish people out of their bondage of Egypt and onward to Mount Sinai to receive the Torah for their mission to be a nation that shall be a light unto nations.

And yet for all its simplicity, much of the world still has difficulty adopting Passover’s basic lesson. As essential as Freedom seems to be, few societies are able to fully embrace it. Why is this?

Perhaps the answer can be found when we take a closer look at how Freedom came about for the Israelites in the Exodus story. When God first approached Moses about redeeming them, He had to twist Moses’ arm and convince him to take the job as their leader and spokesman. Moses had many issues and objections, one of them being why the Jewish people would believe that he – complete unknown - could play this role and succeed.

Moses was reassured and God provided him with a couple miracles to show his credibility. With this in hand, he headed to Egypt. But before he went to Pharaoh, he met and spoke to the Jewish leaders as well as the people, and performed the miraculous signs he had been given. Understandably they were met with adulation, joy and anticipation of a better life.

But things took a turn for the worse once Moses went to Pharaoh demanding he let the people go. Pharaoh told him to take a hike, that Moses is just a trouble-maker, that the people are really lazy and in reaction to Moses’ request, they would not be provided with straw but still had to fulfill the same quota of bricks. Oy!

Moses made things much worse for his people who, upon hearing their new harsher situation, were ready to stone him. Moses was quite perplexed and upset and asked God why he was sent as it only made things worse. God responded, "Now you are going to see what I plan to do to Pharaoh." It was only at this point that God declared, Let's play ball - now and only now.

Why did Moses have to first fail so miserably before God started the Redemption?

Moses actually instigated the problem. He introduced an element to the process that God never mentioned nor planned at first blush. And that was the involvement of the Israelites. Moses asked what he should tell the Israelites when he arrived on his mission, how is he supposed to convince them. But who told him to go to the Jewish people in the first place? Not God. God told him to go straight to Pharaoh. Moses brought up the idea, saying, "when I go to the Israelites..." even though he was never instructed to do this.

Moses assumed Redemption should be some sort of grass-roots, freedom movement "of the people and by the people," in addition to "for the people." He was wrong.

As Rabbi Matis Weinberg pointed out, Moses assumed Redemption should be some sort of grass-roots, freedom movement "of the people and by the people," in addition to "for the people." But that was his assumption, not God’s. Indeed, when the Redemption happens in earnest through the 10 plagues, the Israelites virtually have no role whatsoever. They are passive bystanders as God strikes Pharaoh and Egypt with every manner of difficulty. The Jews are merely along for the ride.

Freedom from Egypt was ultimately meaningful because it was directed solely by God and not by man and not even by angels. As the Haggadah points out: “And the Lord brought us out of Egypt” -- it means “Not through an Angel, not through a Seraph, nor through any emissary, but that He alone - God in His glory - did it.”

When Freedom is man-made, it is often subjugated to an agenda of its proponents and ends up falling prey to those who pervert it for their own ends. The Arab Spring began earnestly enough in Tunisia with a fruit-cart street vendor who had had enough of the corruption, harassment and humiliation at his attempt to make a simple living to support his family, and ended up immolating himself in despair. It galvanized an entire region to protest their governments and seek change for the better. But the Arab Spring was quickly hijacked and nothing meaningful ever really came of it. The same can be said of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 which still has a stranglehold on its citizens and sows its evil goals all over the world.

Real Freedom needs to have a pure and righteous goal, led by genuinely humble people like Moses who only care about the true good and welfare of their people; the opposite of the leaders of Hamas who live in opulence in Qatar while encouraging the masses to give up their livelihoods, their homes and even their lives as martyrs.

True Freedom needs to be instigated by a pure spiritual source, otherwise it gets hijacked by other oppressors. God didn’t take the Israelites from Egypt so they could have a break and play golf. No, God's Freedom Train is one that is headed towards Truth, Good, Morality and Tikkun Olam - making the world a better place. But that ride has a price, a price that too few world leaders are willing to pay because Freedom is the strongest spot-light that can shine on and expose cruelty, injustice, cronyism and corruption.

Freedom in all its shades - freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to a fair and open trial - demands transparency. Those who rule with corruption and evil are threatened immensely by Freedom and its cousins, Openness, Accountability, Responsibility and the fair treatment of any and all human beings through the recognition that all are created in the image of God and deserving of respect. This is why Freedom doesn’t happen in China, Cuba, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, Russia, or Gaza.

At the end of the Seder we declare, "Next Year in Jerusalem," with the fervent hope for the Final Redemption that will bring to entire world the basic truth of Freedom: Freedom from corruption, Freedom from cruelty, Freedom from injustice and Freedom from evil. When we will live in a time and a place that the prophet Isaiah foresaw when he declared:

And the many nations shall go and say, “Come, Let us go up to the Mount of God - to the House of the God of Jacob – so that we may be instructed in God’s ways and that we may walk in God’s paths.” For Torah instruction shall come forth from Zion, the word of God from Jerusalem… And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation, nor shall they learn ever again about war.

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What saved the enslaved Jews of Egypt
by Sara Yoheved Rigler
What saved the enslaved Jews of Egypt?
Our Sages assert that the Israelites in Egypt were on the lowest level of spiritual impurity. They worshipped idols. They were debauched and dissolute. So how did they merit the grand and miraculous redemption?

They had only three things going for them: They kept their Hebrew names, their Hebrew language, and their distinctive Hebrew dress. In other words, they retained their Jewish identity.

Wait a second! Didn’t you cringe when you found out that the biggest Ponzi scheme in history had been perpetuated by someone with a distinctly Jewish name? Wouldn’t we have preferred that instead of retaining his Jewish identity he had changed his name to Christopher Johnson?

What is the redemptive value of Jewish identity?

The question assumes particular importance in our generation. Indeed, the rates of adultery, domestic violence, addiction to drugs and porn, and murder for reasons as trifling as being cut off in traffic have skyrocketed in this generation. An objective look at our moral standing would produce a grim assessment.

Judaism promulgates a teleological worldview – that history is moving toward a specific goal, namely, the Redemption, or the Messianic era. So how can a generation as dissolute as ours be redeemed?

The Power of Community
Maimonides, in his code of Jewish Law, makes a startling pronouncement. He writes that a Jew who lives in isolation from the Jewish community, even if he keeps all the commandments, is considered a kofer b’ikar, a heretic. The implication is that identifying with the Jewish community is a basic value that underlies all the commandments.

The challenge to identify as a Jew or not became a viable choice in the 19th century, as the ghetto walls came down. During the 19th and early 20th century, huge numbers of Jews defected. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the majority of Warsaw’s most affluent Jews converted to Christianity. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1867 and 1918, about 20,000 Jews converted to Christianity to rid themselves of the social stigma of being Jewish. (Gustav Mahler is the most famous example; he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1897 in order to snag the post of Conductor of the Viennese Opera.)

Many Jewish immigrants en route to America from Eastern Europe threw their tefillin into the New York harbor because they wanted to eschew their Jewish identity and become “Americans.” In contrast to the ancient Hebrews in Egypt, who retained their Hebrew names and language, many Jewish immigrants changed their names. The film Hester Street about life on the lower East Side has a scene in a class for ballroom dancing. The sign on the wall proclaims: NO YIDDISH SPOKEN HERE.

In our generation, many Jews have renounced their Jewish identity in favor of becoming “citizens of the world.” Their political views have led them to identify with the enemies of the Jewish People.

Since 1948, the benchmark of Jewish identification in America has been, more than synagogue affiliation, support of the Jewish State. Rabbi Nachman Kahana remembers that when he was a teenager in New York in 1948, he helped raise funds to buy arms for the Jewish fighters in what was soon to be the State of Israel. Their truck would stop at a street corner, they would jump out, and two of them would hold an Israeli flag horizontally. Passers-by would reach into their pockets, and without even looking, throw everything they had into the flag. This enthusiastic support of Israel was unwavering in the American Jewish community until the last decade.

That’s why alarm bells rang a couple years ago when a study revealed that 50% of American Jews under the age of 35 would not consider it “a personal tragedy if the State of Israel ceased to exist.” Two months ago an American Congresswoman declared that the Jews of America had sold out Israel in their support of Obama’s diplomatic surrender to Iran’s nuclear program.

The minimum requirement to be redeemed is to identify as a Jew.

The nadir of this abandonment of support for Israel is the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, which actually has some Jews among its supporters. The BDS movement seeks to destroy Israel economically just as Iran seeks to destroy Israel physically. The starkest defection from the Jewish People is to side with those sworn to our destruction. According to Jewish law, every person born to a Jewish mother is Jewish, even if s/he converts to another religion. But a Jew needs to minimally cast his/her lot with the Jewish community to be redeemable.

Let’s be clear here. God wants the maximum from us Jews: love your neighbor as yourself; keep Shabbos; don’t speak lashon hara; keep kosher – the whole nine yards. But the minimum requirement to be redeemed is to identify as a Jew.

Spiritual DNA
Why should a dissolute Jew who identifies as a Jew be redeemable? Here it gets mystical. According to our sages, the Patriarchs and Matriarchs passed their spiritual DNA down to their descendants. Their spiritual achievements were not personal. In virtually every Divine revelation to the Patriarchs, God makes promises dealing with their descendants – they will be “like the stars of the heaven” and “like the sands of the seashore,” they will inherit the Land of Israel, etc. Among the promises was that God would not let a Jewish soul hit rock bottom without Divine intervention to stop his free-fall. This spiritual safety net is called, “zechut avot,” the merit of the forefathers.

According to the Midrash, at the Splitting of the Sea, the angel of Egypt protested to God that both the Hebrews and the Egyptians were idol worshippers. Why should the Hebrews be saved, and the Egyptians drowned? God answered that the Hebrews are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Zechut avot, the merit of the forefathers.

But zechut avot, like any inheritance, only becomes yours if you claim it. Your grandfather can bequeath you a bank account worth a million dollars, but if don’t show up at the lawyer’s office and identify yourself as Jake Levy’s grandson, you won’t have access to his fortune. If you don’t actively identify as a Jew, you can’t inherit the precious fortune of zechut avot.

Passover poses the challenge to every Jew: Are you in or are you out?

Zechut avot is like a skydiver’s reserve chute. If the main parachute fails to open, and the skydiver is falling at 120 mph, she can be saved by the reserve chute. But only if she pulls the cord! The cord that activates the merit of the forefathers is Jewish identity.

Jewish identity is what prompted Kirk Douglas to fast every Yom Kippur. As he proudly stated, “I might be making a film, but I fasted.”

Jewish identity is what prompted Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to post a large silver mezuzah on the doorpost of her Supreme Court chambers.

Jewish identity is what prompted movie star Scarlet Johansson to stand up for Israel at the cost of her prestige as an Oxfam ambassador.

The Passover Seder speaks about four sons. Only one of them is cast as “wicked.” As the Hagaddah states: “The wicked son, what does he say? ‘What is this service to you?’ ‘To you,’ but not to him. Because he excludes himself from the community, he is a heretic. … Say to him, ‘Because of what God did for me when I went out of Egypt.’ For me, but not for him, because if he would have been there, he would not have been redeemed.”

The first Passover marked the birth of the Jewish nation. Every Passover since poses the challenge to every Jew: Are you in or are you out?

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Shalom Zahara, Please enjoy today's Daily Inspiration from Israel.

The Song of Songs, by Shlomo
שִׁיר הַשִּׁירִים אֲשֶׁר לִשְׁלֹמֹה
Song of Song 1:1 (The Israel Bible, p. 1787)
SHEER ha-shee-REEM a-SHER lish-lo-MOH
A Sacred Love Story
By Rabbi Elie Mischel

Song of Songs, read on the holiday of Passover, is written as a love story between a woman and her beloved. It describes a romantic relationship, often using very sensual language. At first glance, it seems like such a book has no place among the other books of the Bible. The Bible is holy, the love between man and women is earthly and mundane. The book's language portrays a passionate and intense love, which seems out of place in a religious text.

Indeed, some translations prefer not to translate Song of Songs with a literal translation, opting to forgoe the plain meaning of the text and providing an allegorical interpretation instead. Since the literal language of the text is too physical, they provide their readers with only the "deeper" meaning of King Solomon's words.

This, of course, begs the question of why Song of Songs was written as a love story at all.

The question becomes even stronger when you consider the words of the great talmudic sage, Rabbi Akiva, who said:

"The entire universe is unworthy of the day that the Song of Songs was given to Israel, for all the Writings are holy, but Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies. " (Mishna Yadayim 3:5)

Does this love story really sound like the "Holy of Holies? Was the the whole world was created for this?
A Sacred Love Story
By: Rabbi Elie Mischel
APRIL 27, 2024
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE https://theisraelbible.com/a-sacred-love-story/?

Shalom Zahara, Please enjoy today's Daily Inspiration from Israel.

Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.
וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם לְבָנֶיךָ וְדִבַּרְתָּ בָּם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ בְּבֵיתֶךָ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ בַדֶּרֶךְ וּבְשָׁכְבְּךָ וּבְקוּמֶךָ
Deuteronomy 6:7 (The Israel Bible)
v'-shi-NAN-tam le-va-NE-kha v'-di-BAR-ta bam b'-shi-t'-KHA b'-vei-TE-kha u-v'-lekh-t'-KHA ba-de-REKH u-v'-sho-kh'-BE-kha u-v'-ku-ME-kha
Embracing Your Inner Child
By Rabbi Elie Mischel

Have you ever walked with a child and had the following experience? You are on the way to school, or it is time to leave the park and go home. But whereas you are walking briskly, conscious of the time and where you have to be next, your four-year-old has stopped walking, completely mesmerized by an ant crawling out of a crack in the sidewalk. “Mommy – look!!” they yell with an intensity that matches your stress about being late to your next appointment. And at that moment, when you’re caught between your own sense of urgency and your child’s amazement, you have experienced the fundamental difference between adults and children.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE https://theisraelbible.com/embracing-your-inner-child/?