Living Our History – Passover

Sermon on Living Our History – Passover
March 30, 2007
Rabbi David Kaufman

This week, I had the opportunity to deliver the invocation for the Iowa State House and Senate. I have had one previous opportunity to do that and have joked about the fact that what I should have said in that context is “I pray to God that the state of Iowa will enforce a real separation of church and state!” Yet, it is an honor to speak in that context and a wonderful opportunity to teach about Judaism.

This time, when Paulie Lipsman called me Monday afternoon to ask if I would fill a vacant slot the next day, I remembered a conversation that I had with Ako Samad, who is serving in the State House now. Ako told me that the invocations are always very Christological and that he would like me to come and he would sponsor me. So on Tuesday morning, I delivered the invocation standing on the podium with a Muslim, Ako, and a Christian, State Senator Mark Hatch, who co-sponsored me. It was, as far as we know, the only time that a Jew, a Christian, and a Muslim have ever stood together on the podium of the Iowa state House or Senate for the invocation.

I talked about the coming Passover holiday and its themes, particularly the importance of the Freedom of Religion.

This evening, I would like to share with you, some of my thoughts from that morning and also some as I look forward to the coming Passover week.

On Monday evening, Jewish people from around the world will be thanking God for the blessing of freedom as we recall the Exodus from Egypt during our Passover Seder meals. We are commanded by our tradition, not merely to retell the story of the bitterness of slavery; not merely to retell the story of the wonders that God did for our people in ancient times as told in our scriptures; but instead, we are to act as if we ourselves have been brought from slavery to freedom. Our texts remind us, “Remember that YOU were a slave in Egypt.”

We also read the text, “Arami Oveid Avi,” “My ancestor was a wandering Aramean.” That text reminds us that our ancestors were wanderers who had nothing, and that, we, who have blessings in life, should be thankful for them.

From these traditions comes a third, “Remember the stranger, for you were a stranger.” There were times, for many Jews all too recently, that our people were forced to flee their homes, to live as strangers, to suffer curses in order to obtain blessings in a new land. We must remember, as we deal with the strangers in our midst, that we were once strangers ourselves.

The former President of Israel, Ezer Weizman, said, in an eloquent speech to the German Bundestag in 1996:

All Jews, in every generation must regard themselves as if they had been there, in previous generations, places, and events.

● I was a slave in Egypt.

● I received the Torah at Mount Sinai.

● Together with Joshua and then with Elijah, I crossed the Jordan River.

● I entered Jerusalem with King David, was exiled from it with King Zedekiah, and did not forget it by the rivers of Babylon.

● And when Adonai returned the captives of Zion, I dreamed among the builders of its ramparts.
● I fought the Romans and was banished from Spain.

● I was bound to the stake in Mainz.

● I studied Torah in Yemen and lost my family in Kishinev.

● I was incinerated in Treblinka, rebelled in Warsaw, and emigrated to the land of Israel, the country from which I had been exiled and where I had been born, from which I come and to which I return.

● I am a wandering Jew who follows in the footsteps of his forbearers, and just as I escorted them there and then, so do my forbearers accompany me and stand here with me today.

When our forbearers, those Jews who fled Czarist Russia in the 1880s, the Jews who fled from persecution in the aftermath of World War I, and the Jews who fled from the throes of genocide during the darkest time in our people’s history, sat around their Passover Seder tables in this country; they realized the true meaning of the Passover Seder, from oppression to freedom. Not only had they understood its meaning, not only had they remembered the trials and tribulations of their ancestors, but that meaning had become real for them.

As they sang the songs of Passover, these American Jews added a new song to their and our American Jewish repertoire, “My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty.” And Irving Berlin, born as Issador Baline, whose family fled from Russia and came to this land of liberty in 1893, wrote one of his own to add to it, “God Bless America!”

What blessings we have! Our journey has been long and arduous and those blessings are always under threat. The future is an unknown. The famous Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai wrote:

And what is the continuity of my life?
I am like one who left Egypt.
The Red Sea is split in two and I cross on dry ground,
With two walls of water—on my right and on my left.

Behind me—Pharaoh’s soldiers and horsemen.
Before me—the wilderness
And perhaps, the Promised Land.
This is the continuity of my life.

Our people are walking upon dry land. The future is unknown. There are always pursuers, those who wish our people ill, behind us. Yet, it seems also that our survival is overseen by a miraculous force that brings us through tribulation time and time again.

How many times could we say, “Dayeinu?” How many times remember miracles and tremendous deeds that saved our people? We say, “Dayeinu,” “it would have been enough for us,” but we know that “Lo Dayeinu,” “it would not have been enough for us,” is our reality.

Were God to have parted the sea for us, but allowed Pharaoh’s army to chase us and catch us, would it have been enough? Would it have been enough for us to have entered the wilderness, but never to have emerged from it? Would it have been enough for us to have survived the destruction of the Northern Kingdom, but not the Babylonian exile? Would it have been enough for us? Lo Dayeinu. It would not have been enough for us.

Were it not for all of our blessings as a people, we would not still be a people and many of our families would not have survived the generations.

May we be thankful and remember our history, its blessings and its curses.

This coming week, as the Jews of the world celebrate the Passover holiday and the Christians celebrate Easter, let us all, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Americans of all religious traditions, of all races, of all ethnicities, remember and cherish the blessing of religious freedom and all of our blessings in life.

Hag Sameach. Happy Passover Holiday.
And Shabbat Shalom.