Question:
In one of your recent satirical posts you made fun of Jews who rented out hotels in Orlando for the Passover holiday. This sounded like envy to me. What’s wrong with vacationing during the weeklong holiday. Isn’t Passover called the Holiday of Freedom?
Answer:
The freedom our Sages spoke about was much more than the freedom of a vacation from work or from cooking in the kitchen. The freedom symbolized by the holiday of Passover has nothing to do with tennis, golf, swimming, and relaxing in a hammock. All of those activities are fine, and vacations are dandy, but the Passover story and the Exodus from Egypt are repeated year after year to remind us of something much deeper and to teach us and our children who we are as Jews.
First of all the Passover story teaches that we are not like the Egyptians or the Gentiles. We are the Children of Israel. It teaches us that Egypt is not our home, nor America, Russia, German, Canada, England, or France. Our home is the Land of Israel. It teaches us that our goal as a people should not be to achieve greater and greater success and fortune in foreign lands but rather “Next Year in Jerusalem.” On Seder Night we are to teach are children that their future does not lie in New York, California, or South Florida, but that our own Jewish Homeland is in Eretz Yisrael.
Our freedom on Passover is not freedom of a fun vacation before returning to our usual routines, but the freedom to break away from foreign countries, foreign cultures, foreign languages, and foreign aspirations. Jewish freedom means to break away from the Egypts of today and to return to be who we truly are – the Children of Israel.
The holiday gives us the strength to make this great change. The blessing needed, and the courage required, come to us as an inheritance from our Forefathers who made the journey from slavery to freedom. The strength comes from Hashem who is ever willing to help us on the way out of the mental and psychological and spiritual bondage which inflicts us in foreign lands to the point where Jews believe they are Americans or Canadians of Englishmen like everyone else. The bondage makes us want to stay in alien places, clinging to alien identities, just as 80 percent of the Jews in Egypt wanted to remain a part of the great Egyptian Empire and not follow Moses on the journey to the Promised Land.
Each and every Jew can attain this spirit of freedom by reciting the Haggadah with a deep attention to its meaning and by acting on its message of “Next Year in Jerusalem.” As we say at the very beginning of the Seder: “
This year we are here (in the exile of Brooklyn, Toronto, and London) – next year in the Land of Israel. This year we are slaves (in Florida, California, and Lakewood) – next year free men (in Eretz Yisrael.)” Amen.
Tzvi Fishman was awarded the Israel Ministry of Education Prize for Jewish Culture and Creativity. Before making Aliyah to Israel in 1984, he was a successful Hollywood screenwriter. He has co-authored 4 books with Rabbi David Samson, based on the teachings of Rabbis A. Y. Kook and T. Y. Kook. His other books include: "The Kuzari For Young Readers" and "Tuvia in the Promised Land". His books are available on Amazon. Recently, he directed the movie, "Stories of Rebbe Nachman."
