Madlik Model Seder 2024

Well, welcome, Rabbi. We have not been together for ages. We were together in person at the Jerome L. Stern lecture, pre-Passover lecture (at Hadar Institute).

Adam Mintz: Which was very good.

GS: And it talked about the fact that this Seder was different from other Seders. This L’El Shim’urim, you know, the night of the original Seder, there were probably screams and shouts outside. The people inside the doors were hoping that the marks that they put on their doorpost were actually going to perform as advertised.

1:37 – GS:

They were slaves. They didn’t know where they were going. There was uncertainty. Truly, it’s a different Seder. You and I, you know, we’ve lived what my father would call charmed lives, privileged lives. At our Seders, we rejoice at the freedom that we have. And if we think of those who are in need, it’s probably thinking of the other. And here we are, we’re going to be celebrating a Seder where when we think of those in need, we’re thinking of ourselves, of our own people. It’s really, truly, it’s going to be a different kind of Seder this year.

2:18 – Adam Mintz:

Really, I mean and you know the challenge of how to deal with it and what  to what and how to feel and what to say is really a challenge so I’m happy we’re doing this and we’re thinking about it a few days early.

2:31 – GS:

Okay, so what I want to start talking about is hostages. When you drive through Israel today, you see these signs everywhere, and it says, Pidyon Shvuyim Mitzvah G’dolah. Redeeming the hostage is a big mitzvah. And, you know, I have to say that when I talk politics with my Israeli friends and I say, well, you know, the hostages is one thing, but this is global politics. This is, you know, what about the people on the border? You can’t just say we’ll do anything for the hostages. And the number of times that Israelis have said to me, you don’t understand that in Israel Leaving a soldier behind would mean that we’ve lost our soul.

3:32 – GS:

Leaving a hostage unredeemed, we’re losing our soul. And I say to myself, here is an example where the people of Israel, Am Yisrael, and this is coming from across the spectrum of Israelis, they have internalized this concept of Pidyon Shvuyim, of bringing back hostages, as a core, absolute core belief of Judaism in ways that I’m ashamed to say that I think that I’ve forgotten. I think of it as one of a number of variables.

Have you had the same experience?

4:13 – AM:

Very much so. And you know, you were in Israel just now. So, you really experienced that… you felt it. I actually heard a podcast today of Yossi Klein Halevi. And what he said was that following the missile attack from Iran last Saturday night, that actually, you know, all the discussion of Rafa and Gaza… no one’s talking about that anymore. The only thing they want to know is they want to fight Iran and they want to get back the hostages.

That’s all they’re talking about is the importance of getting back the hostages.

4:48 – GS:

So, I want to recast the whole Seder, the whole of Zecher Yetzirat Mitzrayim, based on this concept. In the Shabbat prayers, we say every Shabbat after we say the Shema, we said, emet mitzrayim g’altanu Hashem elokeinu, umibet avodim piditanu. Truly, you redeemed us from Egypt, God. From the house of bondage, you liberated us.” And the word used for liberation is piditanu. And I think that you could make a case that the whole Seder, that the whole holiday of Pesach, basically is commemorating this core belief of us Jews that when God took us out of Egypt, he was redeeming us as hostages.

5:51 – GS:

The language is used later on in that same prayer, it goes, He frees the captives and redeems the humble, and then it ends with the, redemption at its core is redeeming hostages. And I think, and again, I’ll say it again, I’m almost ashamed to admit, that I didn’t understand how core and intrinsic that is to the Jewish experience. I mean, we always talk about Yetziat Mizrayim at every turn, all we Jews say is Zecher l’tziayat mitzrayim, But there must be something about This concept of redeeming somebody who is in captivity, who has lost control of their future, at whatever cost, and I’m just in awe and I’m just humbled, but that certainly is going to impact how I, I don’t use the word celebrate, how I commemorate, how I relive Yetziat Mitzrayim this year.

6:56 – AM:

So that point about Ezrat Abateinu from the Davening is really a good point because, you know, it’s so much is in the language, right? So much is in the way we present it. And Motzi assirim or Ozer Dalim, the next thing, which you didn’t read, right? But Ozer Dalim, that’s connected to helping out the poor people. It’s all the same thing. It’s helping out the vulnerable, the people who are in trouble. And that’s what we celebrate on Pesach.

7:29 – GS:

Absolutely, but to me this year it takes on a new absolute nuance. So, I think we always talk about the Seder as asking questions. It has the Ma Nashtana in it. I think there is no question that as people are looking towards their Seder this year, some people might be afraid of the questions that are going to be asked. Some people are afraid to ask the questions inside of them. I think that at this Seder, we should really take a kind of a cue, and you know I love the kibbutzim haggadot. We should take a cue from the traditions, not only limited to the kibbutz haggadot, where they made up their own questions.

8:23 – GS:

Questions have to be very important this year. So in the source sheet, I was at, as you know from last week’s podcast, I was in Beit Hashitim, and I saw some kibbutz haggadot. And I want to just read from one kibbutz haggadah in terms of the description of the four children. It says, the wise, what does he ask? He asks, what is this war to us? Chacham, ma ha-milchama hazot lanu? What is this war to us that we are obliged to do? And surely you should respond with the laws of liberation and freedom, of herut, that is never finished, and it is incumbent upon everyone to fight for it with all of his soul and all of his might.

9:23 – GS:

The Wicked, what does he ask? What is this war to you? So these were written during the War of Independence. They were written when the people on the kibbutz were defending themselves, and that was their question. And certainly we can ask today, what does this war mean to us? So the wicked says, what does this war mean to you, to you and not to me? And since he excluded himself from the collective, and then it follows the traditional Haggadah….. So again, for the kibbutznikim who were surrounded, they understood that force was necessary.

10:24 – GS:

But those are the kinds of questions that we’re going to have and the discussions that we have to have. And finally, the one who doesn’t know how to ask, you initiate a discussion and recount the chapters of our slavery and wars from Egypt until the present time. You have to believe that as we sit down for the Seder and we know we are using a text that comes, parts of it from the times of the Mishnah, in the year 100-200, Jews have been studying these texts. I started by saying L’el Shmurim, it’s a night of watching.

11:04 – GS:

There were Jews who had seders, were afraid of pogroms, they were afraid of the new land that they had just recently come to. We are, in a sense, I wouldn’t say privileged, but yes, we are privileged. We’re privileged this year to experience a Seder like I would argue most Jews have experienced a Seder for 2,000 years and not as we have experienced it in America for the last 60 years where everything seemed so hunky-dory.

11:40 – AM:

I couldn’t agree more. I’ll just tell you that I spoke about the Seder on another podcast, and I talked about exactly this. I looked at some commentaries. You like looking at the kibbutz commentaries. I was interested in looking at the commentaries from Poland from the 1800s. People who saw themselves as if they were in bondage again, because they live with such uncertainty and pogroms and all of these things, and they write about their experience and what they’re looking for in Poland as if they need another exodus from Egypt.

12:18 – AM:

So it’s exactly what you said, that this year, but the Jews for hundreds of years wrote like this. I was reading a commentary on Ha lach Ma’anya and they said, you know, the Jews in Egypt were in prison and we’re in prison also. But we look to that model to say they got out of prison. We’re going to be freed from prison also.

That’s amazing.

12:40 – GS:

Yeah, it really is. I think as hard of a message as it is, we really have the opportunity to connect with our brethren, our brothers and sisters in Israel in a way this year that we have never been before and with our history. I’ll just continue a little bit in terms of one Haggadah that I saw at this Beit Hashitim, which has this archive of kibbutz Haggadah, in terms of the Ma Nishtana, the four questions. And it says, what is different about this night from all other nights? Because on this night, the night of Pesach, we are gathered here in a meal all together.

13:20 – GS:

Parents and children sitting as one, and like us, all the people of Israel, whether in the land or in the diaspora, from time immemorial on today. I would argue that this moment in time, we have never been closer with our brethren in Israel, with Jews around the world. And we have to savor that just because it’s a fact. And these kibbutznikim understood that. It says, because on all other nights we celebrated the seder of the holiday of freedom under foreign rule in the struggle on the rebuilding and immigration.

14:00 – GS:

And now we are free in the state of Israel. The gates are open for the return of the dispersed from the corners of the world, and it is in our hands to settle them here. Well, you know, one of the things that happened on October 7th is two myths, two Zionist myths may have been shattered. One was that Israel can defend itself by itself without the need of relying on anyone else. And whether it was on October 7th or last Saturday night (when 300+ missiles were fired from Iran and were 99% intercepted with the help of the US, UK, France and even Jordan), we now know that we are part of a larger community. That we need the world.

14:36 – GS:

The world needs us, but we need the world. And the other myth that was shattered is that now that we have a state, a Jew will never be killed for being a Jew in the state of Israel. And in fact, Israelis who thought they had developed a new persona realized that the kids at the Nova (rave), the grown-ups in the kibbutz, they were killed because they were Jews. And Jews have been united in a way like never before. So, this Ma Nistana that it just said that now things are different, we have to question how different they are and what that means for us.

15:15 – GS:

And these are examples of questions and discussions that we are all going to have at the Seder that is going to make this Seder like no other Seder. It goes on. I would love if you would look at the notes that are listed with this podcast and see what else they talk about. They were dreaming of making the world a better place, too.

I think there was a tradition started by the Chabad Rebbe, that he would always talk about the fifth child. And when he talked about the fifth child, he talked about potentially the assimilated Jew who wasn’t at the Seder.

16:06 – GS:

And we, of course, have been at the Hatufim Square outside of the Tel Aviv Museum, We’ve been at our synagogues where we have tables set up with chairs that are empty. In my town, which is a beach town, everybody was encouraged to bring a beach chair and put a chair on the beach with a picture of those who are missing, we should have an empty chair at the Seder. And there is a fifth child at the Seder, and he’s our grandfather, he’s our wife, he’s our husband, he’s our child who’s not there, and that has amazing impact, I think, on who is at the Seder…. The question is who’s not at the Seder as well.

16:52 – AM:

That’s interesting. I know I in my class today, my model Seder today, I referenced that too. And it’s funny because I gave credit to Rabbi Riskin for introducing it, but probably it was the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

17:06 – GS:

I don’t want to dwell on the L’el Shmurim, but truly, and we heard a wonderful lecture about this, the truth is that there was a very strong tradition, and L’el Shmurim was translated in many ways. Some was that we were watching for trouble, for tsarot, some that we simply stayed up all night like the rabbis in Bnei Brak. And talked about it all night. But it wasn’t a night of a simple sitting back and being proud of the fact that we were redeemed. So the next thing that I would like to talk about is Hametz.

17:54 – GS:

You know, and I know, that in the past, I’ve always said that at the Seder, we don’t talk enough about the fact of what’s not there in terms of the Chometz. Most traditional Hagadot will have the blessings and the formulas that we say the night before the Seder in terms of B’dikkat, hachametz, of taking out the chametz. And you can make an argument that it’s just practical to have them at the beginning of the Hagada. But I will argue that actually they’re an intrinsic part of the Seder.

18:39 – GS:

And the Mishnah, the famous Mishnah in Psachim that says, le’or la’ar ba’asa, it says, on the light, the night of the 14th And the rabbis struggle to say, no, no, you can’t clear out the hametz on the night of the 14th (the actual night of the seder). It’s too late by then. But I truly believe that there is a part of the beginning of the Seder where we have to get rid of all the decay and all of the loss that is associated with hummets. And what I will say tonight is that Lechem, and we’ve talked about this before, Rabbi, Lechem (bread) and Milchama (war) are related.

19:25 – GS:

Lechem and war are related. They come from the same shoresh (root). And I think that even in Genesis, when Adam is punished for the sin that he had done, it says, by the sweat of your brow shall you draw lechem (bread) from the earth. (similarly, the blessing on bread is: Motzi Lechem min ha’aretz) So the idea of Lechem is that struggle, is that struggle of possessions and territory. And I think that what happens at the beginning of the Seder is we try to leave behind all that storm and drum. We try to move away from the decay. It’s only for a day. We’ll get back to it, or maybe it’s only for a week.

20:20 – GS:

But I think that’s something that can be discussed this year as well, what Lechem and Milchama and war represents and the respite that we get when we sit down to the Seder.

20:35 – AM:

Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s the simplicity of matzah. That’s the opposite of lechem, right? It has no additives. It doesn’t take a long time. We’re in favor of simplicity. Isn’t that what it’s all about? And if there’s simplicity, then there’s no war and there’s no argument. It’s people get along when there’s simplicity. I think that somehow that’s the point. I mean, that comment may be overly simplistic, because maybe things are more complicated than that. But I think in terms of, you know, kind of images, I’m sure that that’s what the image is.

21:14 – AM:

That’s what the lechem-milchama and matzah being different is. You know, mitzrayim is also an interesting word. Because in the Hallel, we have a phrase, we say, min ha-meitzar karatiyah, means from the straits, from the narrow places (I call out to God). And the Hasidim say that Mitzrayim, Egypt, can also be pronounced Mitzarim, the narrow places. They limit you. Egypt limited us. They enslaved us, right? Sometimes we limit ourselves. We need to be exposed. We need to, you know, to seek opportunity and potential for ourselves.

21:56 – AM:

So that’s also an interesting twist.

21:59 – GS:

You know, there are many Haggadot that have kavanot, where before you drink a cup of wine, you talk about the intention that you have. And when you get rid of and you burn the chametz, it talks about, may all the sitra achir (evil inclination), all the klipot (shells, obstructions) and all wickedness be consumed in smoke. And remove the dominion of evil from the earth, remove a spirit of destruction and a spirit of judgment, all that distresses the Shekhinah. So, I think, and I’ve kind of said this before, that just at Yom Kippur, we start with Kol Nidre to get rid of all of the kind of previous commitments (habits) that we’ve made, so we start with a new slate.

22:45 – GS:

I think that when we start the Seder, It won’t hurt so bad to turn back a page or two and remind ourselves and remind everyone who’s out there, Seder, that part of what we’re leaving behind and we’re trying to leave behind is this struggle and stress. And imagine what a world is, as you say, simple and pure as that matzah.

So, I have to say that I was recently contacted to be on a guest on a podcast and the person who found me found me because of the Sefaria notes that we have for each of our podcasts.

23:26 – GS:

And so I looked at the Sefaria notes, and I saw that there is one note that I gave, and it’s called Ha lachma, Begin with a Breath, and it has close to 5,000 views. It’s probably the most looked at of all of our notes. And it’s based on a very simple concept that just, I don’t know where I got it from, it came into my head. But it seemed to me that we begin the seder with ha-lachma-anya, and the word ha is just a breath. And I thought that after all of us have been finished cleaning the house, scraping the house, preparing for the seder, In this day, looking at our casualties and the struggles that we’ve been, we sit down for this Seder, would it be so bad if we breathed out with just the ha sound?

24:27 – GS:

And what I quoted in this little Sefaria note is the midrash that says that in Genesis 2.4, it says, eyleh toldot ha’shamayim v’aretz behebaram. This is the story of heaven and earth when they were created. And the word created has an extra hey in it. And from that in Bereshit Rabba, Rabbi Yabua learns that the world was created by God with a breath, with a ha sound. So if anyone listens to this podcast and has any experience in meditation and breathing, I would love to hear from you, and I would love to record a meditation that we could all share.

25:14 – GS:

But I think as we sit down to the Seder, to just breathe out would not be the worst thing that we do. And obviously, from the amount of people that have looked at that source sheet, something there resonates, so there’s something there there.

25:31 – AM:

Yeah, I mean, that’s a great thought. That idea of ha is such an interesting thought. And you know, that’s one of those commentaries that you’re not going to find written in the book. But it’s so true, because that’s the way everybody feels now. We can’t just sit down for the Seder. We need to exhale a little bit or take a step back, however you understand that ha. But it needs a ha before you can get going.

I love it.

26:02 – AM: Love it. I do love it, yeah.

26:04 – GS:

The first thing that we do is we hold up the matzah and we break it. And this is a kind of a bookmark: a beginning and an end of the Seder. It kind of encompasses the whole Seder. Because if you recall, when you answer in the traditional Haggadah, the wise son who asks, well, what are we doing here tonight? You say you teach him all the laws of Pesach including and including “we may not eat an afikomen after we finish.” And what that means is, and of course we create a whole wonderful thing for the children in terms of hiding the matzah (and the necessity of finding the 2nd half which must be eaten to finish the seder).

26:47 – GS:

The idea is that we break the matzah at the beginning and we start with the first half. But by the time we’re finished, we have to eat the second half, and we can’t leave until it’s eaten. And there’s a new book that came out for my Rebbe, Shai Held, (Judaism is about Love) and he talks about this concept of the sacrifices, the Thanksgiving sacrifice, where it can’t be left over, and it has to be totally eaten.

And he writes, “the Torah implicitly requires a person who brings a Thanksgiving offering to invite others to dine with him. Why? The laws around the consumption of the Thanksgiving offering are intended to inculcate and express a core religious value. When we have been the beneficiaries of God’s kindness, we are expected to bestow kindness ourselves. The gifts of God are meant to be shared, not hoarded. Authentic gratitude is antithetical to possessiveness and acquisitiveness. The impulse of a grateful person is to give rather than grasp. Leftovers unshared are thus a sign of ingratitude.” And I couldn’t think of a better explanation (for breaking the afikomen).

28:05 – GS:

I used to think that, you know, a poor person always puts a little bit aside for tomorrow. But looking at it from the perspective of Shai Held, what we’re saying is that this Seder more than any other, we have to share our bounty and we have to share it now. And that is the concept of getting a group together, getting a community together, maybe even a world together. And making sure that you distribute everything at the same time and everybody finishes it. And I think that’s an amazing concept for this year for sure where the importance of helping people immediately, helping them now, helping them without delay has never been stronger.

28:57 – AM:

I think that’s so interesting, because you know that the Seder commemorates the eating of the Paschal sacrifice, the Karbon Pesach. And the Karban Pesach, the Torah tells us, had to be eaten in groups of people. Yes, shared it with other people, because they had to consume the whole thing. And the idea of sharing it, of taking care of others, was a very important part of the Karban Pesach. You refer to ha lach ma’anya. In ha lach ma’anya we say, kol dichvin yeitei v’yeichol (anyone who is hungry let them come and eat). He says, everybody come and join us in the Seder.

29:40 – AM:

That idea, that’s exactly what you quote from Shai Held, of inviting everybody, of taking care of everybody, of sharing, is very much there in the traditional Haggadah.

29:51 – GS:

You know, one of the things that we forget, we lose track of, is that the Seder and Pesach is one of three pilgrimage festivals. And what was a pilgrimage festival? It meant that people all over the country, maybe all over the world, but certainly all over the country, came to Jerusalem. There is a saying in Avot do Rabi Natan that ten miracles were performed for our ancestors in the Jerusalem. And we might have heard a few of them, but I want to focus on the following: “No one in Jerusalem ever said, I cannot find an oven to cook the Passover offering.

30:35 – GS:

No one in Jerusalem ever said, I cannot find an affordable bed to sleep in. No one in Jerusalem ever said, this place is too cramped for me to stay.” We have just gone through six months in Israel where people in the North, people in the South have had to leave their homes, go on pilgrimage, and come to Tel Aviv and come to Be’er Sheva and come to Jerusalem. There has been a massive pilgrimage. And how that has affected Israel, I don’t think we’ll know for years, because there has been such a dichotomy.

31:15 – GS:

Between the periphery and the central of Israel. And here God, in His own wisdom, has brought the periphery into the center. And how that has impacted the center and how it has impacted the periphery, I don’t know. But what I do know is that we are celebrating when we say Halakh Ma’anya and we are basically saying what an innkeeper or a householder in Jerusalem would say to the pilgrims who had come from the Galilee and come from the Negev to stay with him. We are reliving that moment and I think that too has to be spoken about at our Seder this year. (The amazing volunteerism and hospitality provided by Israelis for their dislocated brothers and sisters)

31:56 – AM:

Yeah, that’s super interesting. Also, that’s correct I mean, these are all around the same topic and it’s about the fact that division Somehow division is chumetz and chumetz and lechem is milhkama And it’s all related to that point and we need to fight that and we need to go in the opposite direction….

32:16 – GS:

So let’s move on a little bit. We have parts of the Haggadah that have always been kind of strange to me, for one, where we talk about the plagues, how many plagues were there. Yossi HaGalilee says, when can we derive that because God said in the plagues in Egypt, he did it b’etzba with his finger, that there were maybe 10, but at the splitting of the Red Sea, he said it in his arm, it was hand, it was (times 5) 50, and maybe there were 250 plagues, all of these kind of numerical acrobatics, what do they all mean?

33:04 – GS:

And what it dawned on me today was that the plagues were offensive. They hurt the Egyptians. But what happened at the Red Sea was defensive. What happened at the Red Sea is it split and enabled the Jews to escape unscathed. And in a sense, it is a celebration. Of the Jewish, the Israeli approach to our defense, which was on display on Saturday night. We have invested millions, maybe billions of dollars in defending our population. This war would not have occurred had we been able to defend the border on October 7th.

33:58 – GS:

It’s an amazing approach. It failed (on Oct 7th), but on the other hand, it succeeded the other night, and it teaches us a lesson. I thought about the splitting of the Red Sea differently as a result of that experience, that we are ultimately celebrating the fact that we were saved as opposed to the fact that our enemies…  or that somehow we were able to harness God to hurt our enemies.

That was something that just came to me this year.

34:30 – AM:

I’ll tell you that in the Dayenu, there’s a very interesting line. You know, everything in Dayenu is, if he would have had this, but not this, it would have been enough. One of those lines says, ilu kara lanu etayam, had God split the sea, v’lo shikat tzareinu b’tocho, but our enemy would not have been drowned in the sea, it would have been Dayenu. That’s very interesting, that what we’re interested in is our salvation. We don’t need to necessarily punish the enemy. Sometimes it happens, but that’s not what we’re interested in.

And that’s explicit in Dayenu.

35:13 – GS:

You know, we have a custom in my house, but I was happy to see that it’s actually in the traditional Haggadah as brought in Sefaria, that we dip our finger and spill a drop of wine for each plague that was inflicted on our enemies. And my sense is that what we’re saying is that their suffering gives us no satisfaction, but only sadness that their hatred for us exceeds their love of their own. And I think that’s a paraphrase of something that Golda Meir once said. I think she said, there will be peace when you  (our enemies) love your children more than you hate us.

35:51 – GS:

But in all of the kibbutz Haggadot, but I would reckon in all of our seders, we quote that famous midrash, which is that when the Egyptians were sinking into the sea, the angels started to sing. And God says, why are you singing when “my children”, and by that he meant, the Egyptians, are dying? And the fact that it’s in the Kibbutz Haggadot, that also have Shefoch Hamatcha which talks about that we should punish our enemies. There was always this sense that, again, is at the core of the people of Israel, and that I think we ultimately celebrate at the Seder.

36:35 – GS:

That we wish no one bad. We just wish that we can get on with our life and that everyone could love their children as much as we do. But I think it’s an amazing part of the Haggadah. That we have to focus on this year. Again, the thing that really came to my eyes is that so much of the miracle of Yetziat Mitzrayim is focused on Kriyat Yom Suf, on the splitting of the Red Sea. We actually say it (Shirat HaYam) every day, Az Yosher Moshe, and the reason is because of all the stories in the Exodus It is one of just saving our people, saving us so that we can live.

37:30 – GS:

This miraculous, call it an Iron Dome, calling a splitting of the Reed Sea. But I think at our Seder we have to recognize that as well.

37:40 – AM:

I think that if we’re going to end on a note, that’s an amazing note to end on. And I want to thank you, Geoffrey. I hope that people listen to this model Seder, because it doesn’t give you necessarily the details of what to speak about next, next Monday night, but it gives you a framework of some of the issues that need to be addressed. And I guess we all wish the same thing.

38:06 – AM:

And we wish that even before we sit down for the Seder, that the hostages are returned and that peace and security are restored. In Israel and in the region, and we pray for, we pray, I think what we Jews always pray, L’shanah haba b’Yerushalayim hab’nuyah (Next Year In a Rebuilt Jerusalem), but b’nuyah (Rebuilt) means one that’s united and safe and filled with all its people.

38:33 – GS:

Well, thank you so much. You will be in Italy. I will be in L.A. The Jews will be united. We’ll be participating the longest running book club in the history of the world. We’ll be reading the same Haggadah and hopefully getting strength from it. So, what I’m going to do now is I am going to play a song, and anyone in the audience who wants to come up onto the bima, onto the seder, we are going to ask a question, and that is, what is it that makes the Jewish people survive? V’hi she’amda. So, I’m going to play this song.

39:14 – GS:

It became a big hit in Israel. It was sung in Washington, D.C. At the solidarity march, but I’m going to play it, and please come on up to the Beamer, and we’re going to discuss what makes the Jewish people unique.

41:24 – GS:

You know, v’hi she’amda is we raise a cup and we say, and this, This is what saved us and it’s such an amazing litmus test or Rauschau ink blot because no one says what it is that saves us. So I’m curious, what does Vahishayamda mean to you?

41:50 – AM:

I’ll tell you, Geoffrey, that at that wedding I went to today, so I saw the rabbi of the shul where the wedding was, and I asked him what he’s speaking about this Shabbos, and he told me he’s speaking about V’hisha Amdan. He told me a whole d’var Torah, and I told him my d’var Torah. I said, what is V’hi? I heard from Rabbi Riskin many years ago that V’hi, you look at the Seder. And you say, v’hisham do lavoteinu velanu. This is what’s kept us together. You know, the Seder is without question the most observed Jewish ritual, both in America and in Israel.

42:23 – AM:

There’s some ridiculously high number, like 85% American Jews participate in some kind of Seder, and over 90% of Israeli Jews participate in the Seder. That the Seder is unifying is that we all somehow participate in this ritual, and that’s what VeHi means.

42:44 – GS:

So some of the explanations that I’ve gathered, and I’ll just go through them as some of you think about what it means for you, is there are some who talk about the Shekhinah, Some of them talk about our patriarchs and matriarchs, so I’ll call that Emunim ben Emunim. We are believers, children of believers. It’s this kind of chord that goes back into history. We do raise the cup, as I said a second ago, so maybe it’s the l’chaim. Maybe it’s the wine. That is our secret juice. Rabbi Leo Dee, who lost his wife and lost his daughters to a terrorist attack, says, Vehi is the women.

43:34 – GS:

They are the ones who saved us, and in the article that I referenced, he talks about those wonderful midrashim, where the women, whether it’s the birth mothers or whether it was the women who went to their husbands who had given up all hope. Maybe that’s what it is. There was a post from Daniel Gordis this week about what was happening when the missiles were flying, and he said maybe it was, what do they call it, (gallows) humor of when you’re about to be hung, he says all of a sudden he was getting Instagram posts: First direct flights from Iran to Israel since 1979”.

44:30 – GS:

There was humor there. Every week it is published when the candle lighting is in Tel Aviv, in Haifa, in Jerusalem, and so somebody posted a sign very similar to what is normally posted every Friday about when the missiles were going to land. This was Jewish humor, and maybe that is what leads us to survive.

I think the answer might be open to discussion, but the question has never been formulated better than by Mark Twain. So, I’m going to read a little bit from Mark Twain. He wrote it in the 1800s.

45:20 – GS:

It’s Concerning the Jews. It’s pretty famous, but I have it in the source sheet. And he’s talking about how the Jew survived. He says:

He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages, and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream stuff and passed away. The Greek and the Roman followed and made a vast noise, and they are gone.

45:59 – GS:

Other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burnt out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

And I think that’s the question of Vihi Sheyamda.

46:43 – GS:

And it’s a question, but it’s also something that we—what is happening in the world today. You know, we have to look back to what happened in Europe when Jews were accused of being greedy capitalists. And socialists at the same time. And here we are hated by the left and parts of the right. It is an enigma. There is no question about it. And it’s not something that we should necessarily take pride in, but we have to recognize, and I think that’s what the Seder is partially about. Yes, it has an absolutely universal message, Yes, liberation theology was based on the exodus from Egypt, and I’ve talked about that, but there is a unique story here.

47:34 – GS:

The enigma of the Jew, v’hi she’amda, what is it? What is it? And I think that’s a subject also worthy of discussion. And let’s really pray for the hostages to be free, because ultimately it’s our soul that’s in captivity.

And Loren, you are now at the Seder. Un-mic yourself, and I’d love to hear from you, my friend.

48:04 – Loren

Hi Geoffrey. It’s interesting, the Passover Seder each year, we repeat it year after year. Having lived in Israel for time. I think this holiday is all about possibility, and it’s about the ability to look past where we are, and to believe that we’re going to succeed in a more open and constructive manner. And that’s what I celebrate this holiday for. It gives us strength to move forward. And I think this possibility issue, the optimism that we get from our past and how we apply it is how we become better Jews.

48:53 – GS:

Well, I love the fact that you’re so optimistic. I must say a week or two ago I was in Israel and I was interviewing a veteran of the Yom

kippur War who had been protesting before October 7th and then after October 7th pivoted and was supporting soldiers and I introduced him and the first words that came out of his mouth was, “I am an optimist”. And maybe that, Loren, is what your Vihishayamda is, that we are an optimist. I think that Ben-Gurion said, “for us to be realists, we have to be optimists”.

49:40 – GS:

Something along those lines. But I’m with you. I’m with you. We have no choice. It’s just like Golda Meir said in the famous story to Biden, where she said, what is the secret source? What is the secret weapon of the Jewish people? And she said, “we have nowhere else to go”. I think a variation on that is about optimism. We have no other choice than to be optimistic. Okay, everybody, Chag Sameach, let’s all pray for a liberated world, and we’ll see you all, I think, probably next week with Chol HaMoed. We have off spring break for Madlik, but we’ll see you a week after that, and Chag Kosher v’Sameach to all of you. Look forward to seeing you then. Bye-bye.