Sermon for Pesach 21/04/2024

Written by Rabbi Colin Eimer — 25 April 2024

At the shiur last Shabbat we talked about what we thought our Seder might be like this year, in the light of October 7^th and everything since. Some imagined it was going to be a rather muted affair; others said this wouldn’t be the first time Jews have had to celebrate a festival against the backdrop of what’s happening with Israel or in the world. Even in the worst days of the Shoah, Jews did what they could to mark the cycle of the Jewish Year. Somebody in the discussion used the phrase b’chol dor va’dor “in every generation.”

B’chol dor va’dor three such interesting words. For what it felt we were talking about was really, in a way, about how each of us around that table saw the Jewish story. And which part of the Haggadah told our story more authentically, as each of us understands it?

Buit when they said b’chol dor va’dor I wondered which one did they mean? For that phrase figures twice in the Haggadah but in strikingly different ways. The first is just before we begin telling the story of how we came to be in Egypt: v’he she’amdah “It is God’s faithfulness that stood by our ancestors and by us…..” b’chol dor va’dor om’dim aleinu l’challoteinu, “in each and every generation, many have stood against us to make an end of us.”

Is this, then, the eternal narrative of the Jewish people? Is our story nothing more than an emek ha’bachah, “a vale of tears”? On the evidence of the past 6 months, we might be excused for saying, “yes, that’s just what it is. How can you possibly think otherwise?”

If we focus on that b’chol dor va’dor then, it’s easy to understand how the appropriate metaphor of Jewish existence should be a military one: combat; constant vigilance; battening down the hatches; girding our loins for the fight and so on. In other words, you can’t trust the world out there, it’s always trying to do us in and we have to be stronger.

But the second time we say b’chol dor va’dor later in the Seder, is very different. B’chol dor va’dor, “in every generation each individual must see themselves as if they were the ones who actually went out of Egypt.” At the Seder we don’t just talk about the bitterness of slavery, for example, we eat bitter herbs, we ingest the burning heat, to feel that bitterness and pain. Freedom is not merely an intellectual construct but an emotional experience, something we should feel literally, viscerally, in our very guts.

So which is your b’chol dor va’dor?

Rabbi Hugo Gryn, an Auschwitz survivor, suggested that one of the most perverse legacies of the Nazis was that the Shoah had such an impact on the Jewish people that, three generations on, we still refer to it as some sort of base-level which determines how we see our story, gauge contemporary events and respond to them as Jews. With every antisemitic incident you often hear people saying, “That’s how it all started in the 1930s,” as if it ‘proves’ that another Shoah is imminent. And that view of Jewish existence has simply been reinforced by the almost exponential increase in antisemitism in these past months.

Yet Pesach offers an alternative way of looking at our story. This evening we begin counting the Omer, 49 days culminating in Shavuot, the festival commemorating the events at Mount Sinai. Now if somebody doesn’t celebrate Shavuot, Pesach stands on its own, as it were: the festival when we remember gaining our freedom – full stop.

But if you do mark those 49 days in some way, you establish a connection between Pesach and Shavuot. No longer two unconnected festivals which just happen to be 7 weeks apart but two intimately linked moments with a countdown – or count up – to Shavuot. One of the names of Shavuot is, precisely, atseret, meaning something like ‘closure,’ ‘conclusion.’ Shavuot is, therefore, the second, concluding part of Pesach. Clearly, liberation from slavery on its own cannot be a bad thing if you’ve suffered under the yoke of slavery. But real freedom is something more. It implies a way to live your life that is freely-accepted, not imposed on you from the outside – that’s one way of defining ‘slavery.’

Our midrashic tradition recognised that very early on. The Ten Commandments were, we read in the Torah, charut al haluchot “incised on the tablets” (Exodus 32:16.) Midrash read it with just changes just one vowel change: do not read charut “incised” but cherut ‘freedom’ – freedom is what is on those tablets. (Shemot Rabbah 32.1, Pirke Avot 6:2)

That said, connecting Pesach and Shavuot is not particularly special – it’s almost self-evident.

More unusual, though, is a curious connection between Pesach and Tisha b’Av: the black fast of the Jewish calendar, commemorating the destruction of the Temple, exile – effectively, the end of freedom.

Pesach and Tisha b’Av always fall on the same day of the week; in addition, the sidra we read on the Shabbat after Tisha b’Av contains the verse mah ha’eydut v’ha’chukim v’hamishpatim asher tsivah Adonai elohenu etchem “what is the meaning of the laws, statutes and customs which the Eternal our God has commanded us?” (Deuteronomy 6:20) It’s familiar from last night as the question which the Wise Son asks.

Now all of this is mere coincidence due to the way the Jewish Calendar is constructed.

But it goes further. Central to the liturgy of Tisha b’Av are ‘kinot,’ a series of sad, doleful poems, lamenting the destructions and travails that have befallen the Jewish people.

Among those ‘kinot,’ is one with the refrain mah nishtanah halaylah hazeh mikol halaylot. That’s a coincidence which can’t be mere coincidence. Whoever composed that particular poem included a phrase which they knew everybody would recognise and, without thinking, make the connection with Pesach. But what could have been in that anonymous poet’s mind to include such a familiar phrase in a poem for Tisha b’Av, knowing what bells it would ring for us?

Pesach represents freedom, the freedom to choose who and what we are to be. Pesach is the beginning of our story as a people. Tisha b’Av, however, stands for everything antithetical to Pesach: it is the end of the Jewish story, the loss of freedom, of identity; the potential or actual end of our story as a people. It’s a return to everything represented in the Jewish psyche by that deeply-loaded word ‘Egypt’

Putting mah nishtanah in a Tisha b’Av poem is a powerful symbolic reminder of the choices that lie before us, b’chol dor va’dor “in each and every generation.” Where do we, not just the collective ‘we,’ but the individual – you and I – where do we situate ourselves on that continuum between Pesach and Tisha b’Av?

What story do we tell at the Seder, what is our ‘master narrative,’ how do we see our history? B’chol dor va’dor “in every generation, people rise up against us to destroy us”?; or b’chol dor va’dor where each one of us must come to a fresh understanding of freedom every Pesach? And at a time of blatant antisemitism which is the narrative which speaks to us, not because of that antisemitism, but in spite of it?

Creation and destruction – beginnings and endings – independence and subjugation – hope and despair. Looking back, looking forward. That’s what Pesach is and why we have to sit around our Seder tables, year in, year out.

I would like to tell you that I don’t like the first b’chol dor va’dor. I don’t want to live as a Jew feeling beleaguered, having to look over my shoulder all the time. All that does is give me a crick in the neck! I have always identified closely with the second b’chol dor va’dor – the one which demands that I see myself as if I personally were coming out of Egypt, that I have to use my freedom properly. ……. But on that Saturday night, as Iran’s missiles were heading to Israel, I felt something quite different, something of that b’chol dor va’dor which speaks of many standing against us to make an end of us.

That night, I phoned friends of mine in Jerusalem. It was gone midnight here, so would have been gone 2:00am in Jerusalem – but I didn’t imagine for a moment that I would be waking them up from a deep sleep. There was no answer and I wasn’t sure what that meant. But I left a message. By chance they had gone for Shabbat to a hotel on the Dead Sea and on Monday they sent me this text:

just a thought after spending a weekend in a hotel at the dead sea.
the hotel was full. it was such a mixture of Israelis – microcosms of this great country.
muslim religious and not so as they were celebrating the end of ramadan,
arab xtian families,
druse mother with a child with special needs,
religious jews as well as non religious.
at the swimming pool the hijab clad ladies together with young women in mini bikinis, men with tattoos, some with a weapon, mostly without.
in the dining room the same mixture of different styles and colours having the shabat meals and the same mixture of people behind the counter of the workers of the hotel.
all talking together, remarking on the food and cooing all the little children playing together in different languages.
at two o’clock in the morning we stood next to each other on our balconies ( no alarm sounded here, so no run for a safe space) watching the drones arriving from iran being taken down by the iron dome over the dead sea.
what an incredible experience.

It’s obviously not the whole picture, by any means. It doesn’t speak to October 7^th, nor to the subsequent terrible events in Gaza; it doesn’t address a corrupt government, nor what is happening on the West Bank. But it is still something, at least.

We Jews are, as the prophet Zechariah described us, assirei hatikvah, “prisoners of hope.” (Zechariah 9:12) May we always be bound up in that hope, may it always keep us looking forwards, knowing that where we are now is not the end, but nothing more than a stage on the journey, and may the b’chol dor va’dor always be the one which speaks to us of our freedom and the need to work for the freedom of all.