Yair Lapid
Yair LapidFlash 90

In a special Passover prayer posted on his Facebook page, Finance Minister Yair Lapid said that he appreciated the State of Israel – but he asked G-d to “give us a reason to celebrate on this Festival of Freedom.

“Our Father in heaven, I don't mean to say that I don't appreciate the State. But we need something small, something optimistic that we can take with us. We have turned into a bitter nation with deep furrows on the sides of our mouths,” he wrote.

“The Jewish people have had enough of blood, fire, and pillars of smoke,” Lapid wrote, paraphrasing the Passover Haggada. “We need some peace and quiet, because the world has gone crazy. As things get worse and hatred increases, we look even harder to Heaven for a solution, that we should get at least some hint of the proper solutions.”

In his prayer, Lapid referred to the Palestinians as a “boulder” on the shoulders of Israelis. “I know You cannot remove this burden,” Lapid wrote. “But couldn't you just roll it to the side a bit? This boulder is a heavy burden on our hearts. They say that no one can stop a crazy terrorist from, for example, running into a school in Jerusalem and stabbing randomly. But You can – and we need You in so many situations like that, where we have no other solutions.

“Is what we have now the reason you took us out of Egypt, while you helped us survive tyrants like Hitler? Show us some oil in the Judean Desert, help us out a little with the peace talks, let us invent a new kind of computer chip that everyone else needs. We need your help, G-d, especially with spreading love among one another,” Lapid wrote. “If we feel that You love us, we will be able to love ourselves.”