A Jewish Thanksgiving

My favorite Jewish holiday is Passover.  Passover celebrates the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.  This yearly event is centered on the Passover seder or meal.  It involves eating a variety of symbolic foods which reminds us of the exodus from Egypt.  This is a time when Jews remember.  We say, “In memory lies redemption.”  Remembering the Passover is not merely believing that something happened long ago.  We relive and reexperience what happened.  We assert that we ourselves have been slaves to Pharoah.  And we say, had God not acted we, all of us, would still, to this very day, be slaves. It is a corporate experience of thanksgiving.

As a boy, I remember the excitement in our small apartment in the Bronx when it came time to put away the regular dishes and take out the special Passover china from the front closet.  For a moment, our little place became a holy place where memory was celebrated.  The apartment was scoured and cleansed.  All bread and anything associated with leaven was removed.  And then came the day when the big boxes of Matzoh arrived.  We would eat unleavened bread for 10 days to remember what had happened to us when we had to run away with haste.  

We held two seders on successive nights. There were just four of us, my parents, my brother and me.  In our family my parents were the only ones to survive the Nazi madness.  There were no visitors, no grandparents, no cousins, no uncles or aunts, no one else around the table.  My father in Hebrew, Yiddish and English recited from a book called the Haggadah (the telling).  I can still hear his voice and the distinctive melodies he brought with him from Europe.  

Here is something strange though.  In all those Passover seders, the word Nazi was never mentioned. Despite what had happened to my parents, despite most of their relatives having been murdered in the camps, they continued to remember and give thanks for the exodus from slavery.  They refused to grant Hitler and his killers a posthumous victory. 

My parents were not very sophisticated when it came to religion.  But they were determined to remain Jewish despite what had happened to them, despite what had happened to the Jews and despite the silence of God. 

In so many ways, I am a Jew today because of their despite.  Bernard and Pola Haar, thank you.