“This is the promise that stood by for our ancestors and for us. Not only one enemy has risen up against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise up to destroy us. But the Holy Blessed One delivers us from their hands.”
These difficult words from V’hi She’amda in the Passover Haggadah are challenging to read and think about. As an elder Millennial whose earliest memories are the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Rose Garden Ceremony with President Clinton, Prime Minister Rabin, and Chairman Arafat, the idea that in my generation I should be fearful of enemies has been foreign to me. I have been blessed to live safely Jewish my whole life, even while serving in places like Mississippi and Alabama as a Jewish professional; and now get to live and serve one of the most incredible Jewish communities the world has ever known.
So, when I would read those words, “in every generation they rise up and destroy us,” I was privileged to have been able to think, “not in mine.”
As we all know, that’s not true anymore.
The horrors of October 7 were exacerbated by the disillusionment of “October 8,” shorthand for the struggles we have had since October 8 for the plight of our people to be taken seriously. October 8 means the minimization of the inhumanity of October 7. October 8 means the rejection of Israel’s right to defend herself and calls for Israel to stand down its military, all before a single action was taken. October 8 means the demonization of Diaspora Jews, especially on college campuses, holding them responsible for whatever perceived moral failing Israel’s existence represents.
Over the past 18 months, a smoldering antisemitism combusted, with so many Jews wondering what steps we need to take to keep ourselves safe – physically, emotionally and spiritually – in what for so many of us feels like a new (or devastatingly old) reality.
In our generation, our enemies have risen up.
The Maaseh Nissim, an early 19th Century commentary on the Haggadah written by the Polish Rabbi Yaakov Lorberbaum, teaches that V’hi She’amda is a statement of God’s love for us. The Holy One has allowed and empowered us to survive these generations, even as nations have risen up against us. But, he teaches, rather than empowering us to destroy our enemies, and casting us in front of the world as a tool of punishment, God has held us so that we would survive, and lovingly protected us from further scorn.
V’hi She’Amda is not the end of the Passover Haggadah, it is in the middle. It is a step on the way from degradation to freedom, that eternally optimistic arc of the Haggadah that guides us to keep space in our mind for the opportunity for things to get better, no matter how challenging they might be in our moment in history. There may have been enemies in the past, there may be enemies now, but our faith is that there will come a time when our enemies will have faltered, and we will be free of their wrath, then and forever more.
But one of the beautiful elements of the Haggadah is how it challenges us to think of ourselves on so many planes at once. We are compelled on Seder night to think of ourselves as having personally gone out from Egypt, joining the generation that was enslaved by Pharaoh and enjoyed their first tastes of freedom. When we read V’hi She’amda we are invited to consider the challenges of each generation that has come before us, to learn from them to be on guard in our own, all while appreciating the ways in which we have it better than our ancestors had it before us. We draw on that to find the strength and the hope to confront the challenges we face.
As we go on this mental journey back through time, we also know that at that moment we are connecting ourselves with Jews around the world, as we all gather that night around our Seder tables. Participating in a Passover Seder is the most commonly practiced Jewish act – more Jews go to Seder than even light Chanukah candles. Knowing that our Seder is joined by millions of others around the world is another source of strength for us.
On the eve of this year’s Passover, as our people are weary from 553 days of war and captivity, we are always looking for new sources of strength. For those who have not seen it yet, let me recommend author Dara Horn and illustrator Theo Ellsworth’s brilliant new graphic novel, One Little Goat. It tells the story of a family who cannot find the afikomen and thus cannot complete the Seder. They are greeted by one little goat (Chad Gadya in Aramaic, the song we sing as the Seder nears its conclusion) who leads them on a journey through Seders in historical settings and invites us to consider what those Jews in those times faced, and how they went from degradation to freedom in their eras.
If a single Seder evening invites us to think of us ourselves connected both temporally and geographically with Jews of old and Jews of now around the world, One Little Goat combines the two into one, with the message that no matter how dark it might get (including the darkness of that night in Egypt), there is always hope. We might have to challenge ourselves to see or feel it, but to be Jewish is to know that hope is always there. It may be, like the afikomen, hidden behind a piece of furniture, or seemingly high up out of reach, but it is there.
So as we all prepare to gather around our Seder tables tomorrow evening, may the words of the Haggadah inspire us to find the strength to navigate whatever narrow places we find ourselves navigating this year, the faith that our journey will eventually take us to the Promised Land of freedom, and the hope that we will taste and feel it in our time.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Pesach Sameach,
Rabbi Greg Weisman
