Pesach affords us the opportunity to taste, feel, and relive the greatest story of time...
It was one Passover at the seder table when the host and
guests came to the song Had Gadya.
A farmer seated at the table refused to sing along with the rest and chose to
sit stoically while the others rejoiced.
“Why aren’t you singing Had Gadya with us?” they asked.
“It just does not look right.
After all,” he continued, “in the middle of the night a young goat is
sold for only two zuzim? Who knows? Maybe it was stolen merchandise?”
In truth, the song is a metaphor. The two zuzim were the tablets that God gave to
the Jewish people (the goat) claiming us as His people for eternity.
*
Afelah is darkness
in the Torah, the penultimate plague that God washed upon the oppressive Egyptians. What was this afelah?
The real darkness was that when a Jew perceived his neighbor
in pain he tried to get up but could not; the darkness was palpable, it pushed
back. The awful pain of this plague was
that no one was able to help another.
That makes it the worst affliction until now.
*
“Years after the war I learned that an old Rebbe from my
little town in Hungary was
now living in New York. I went to visit him, and found that he looked
exactly as he always had…
“Has nothing changed?” I asked him.
“Nothing.”
“What about me?”
“You haven’t changed either.”
“And Auschwitz? What do you make of Auschwitz?”
“Auschwitz proves that nothing
has changed, that primeval war goes on. Man is capable of love and hate, murder
and sacrifice.”
- Elie Wiesel
Until men are no longer content to oppress one another; Until people learn that taunting and
victimizing others will not work, nothing will change.
Until all slavery comes to an end, the Exodus is
incomplete. Thus we open our doors
for the prophet Elijah to bring us
closer to humanity…