We recently finished Passover, the Pesach holiday. The Seder night is considered the night par excellence of Jewish education. We read the Haggadah, which tells of the questions of the four sons - righteous, unrighteous, simple and too young to ask. And to them, we tell the story of Jewish history, from Abraham our father until the time of Moshiach. Now that it's after the Pesach, I'd like to share some insights on "Mah Nishtanah", what's relevant in the Haggadah to today's world, and what we can change in our ministry of education (and the answer is not Dovrat).
The not-so-righteous, or rasha ("wicked" is the usual translation), assails us with the cry: "What is all this divine service to you?" After all, we ourselves didn't go out of Egypt, and look at all the troubles we've gotten throughout history as payback for eating matzos, cleaning out chametz and generally acting Jewish; we certainly haven't had a visit by Moshiach in this 2,000-year-old exile. I bring this up because in its Friday, April 22 edition, the Jerusalem Post's magazine decided to cynically take a broadside at Arutz-7 and all Moshiach-believers by publishing a question about the b'racha recited over the seeing of the Moshiach. But the attack was put in perspective when, on the same page, one of the Post's editors decided to repeat the rasha's argument, that all those divine mitzvot are just too "burdensome".
The Post's writer totally overlooks the insight of Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch that with the service comes the reward: the land of milk and honey. In fact, the editor, normally very insightful in his arguments, puts forward one very nonsensical theory regarding the land for which he has so much disregard: we are jettisoning Gush Katif because it represents us acting as Pharaoh, ruling over the poor Arabs ( "Palestinians" ) who we employed. Never mind that nobody forced these Arabs to work for us, and that nobody ever used their babies' blood for beauty baths, or used their children as fillers in the walls they built.
The writer even blames Israel for not training them as engineers, doctors and lawyers (as a doctor, I think we in Israel have plenty enough lawyers as it is). But I personally can testify that in November 1981, the physicians at Tel Hashomer Hospital were giving lectures to Arabs from the territories, trainees learning to become radiology technicians. And I would wager that similar training programs probably existed in other fields, as well.
In any case, the argument of the rasha goes deeper, and I would like to offer an explanation for it. Recently, Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow passed away. In his From Jerusalem and Back, Bellow airs both the right- and the left-wing views of the "territories" of Yehuda-Shomron-Aza (Yesha). The left-wing view comes from the mouth of Professor Tzvi Lamm: Israel "lost sight of the true reason for the founding of the state - the rescue mission - and became power-intoxicated... with the overbearing self-righteousness of our 'historical rights' to the land." Not "Land", but "land"; and not Biblical rights, nor divinely-promised rights, but "historical rights". Because Lamm, and the rasha, need to deny God in this whole picture.
The Left must get Israel out of Yesha because God promised it to Israel. And because it's the God-fearing, kipah-wearing Jews who live there. And because if they allowed Israel to stay in Yesha, then the Left might have to admit that even pre-1967, Green Line Israel is only theirs by the grace of God. But the Haggadah says the rasha is one who "kafar ba'ikar", he denies the role of God in history. So, he makes up nonsensical rationalizations for his Disengagement, such as equating Israel with Pharaoh. And the rasha asks: "What is this service to you?" Why do you bother to work, to serve in the army, to develop this world, if you attribute your success, your accomplishments and your very security to God? And of course, why do you bother with "burdensome" religious service?
And the answer is "ba'avur zeh", because we do this service , God crowns our meager efforts with success. True, we Jews didn't have the power to lift our little fingers to get ourselves out of Egypt. God did for us all that we read about in this Haggadah. But now he gives us the strength to perfect His world. And he gave us His Land, to work it. And He crowned our efforts with success, enabling us to build a modern society out of a wilderness. And enabling us to secure and protect that society. Not with nonsensical "peace " plans like Oslo, Geneva and other Disengagements, but with our efforts (this "service " you view as "burdensome"), blessed with success by the Almighty Himself.
Such is the education of the Seder night, and of the Pesach holiday. Certainly, this country has failed in properly educating its Jewish children. With 50% of the country having no meaningful recollection of the Six Day War (being under the age of 45), they still divide Eretz Yisrael into pre-1967 and post-1967 Israel ("this is Israel, those are territories"), just like Professor Lamm. Instead, they could have been taught that both 1948 and 1967 were battles in one long war, one long struggle of the Jew in history. The history from Avraham Avinu until Moshiach - a history we read to all our children, every Seder night.
The not-so-righteous, or rasha ("wicked" is the usual translation), assails us with the cry: "What is all this divine service to you?" After all, we ourselves didn't go out of Egypt, and look at all the troubles we've gotten throughout history as payback for eating matzos, cleaning out chametz and generally acting Jewish; we certainly haven't had a visit by Moshiach in this 2,000-year-old exile. I bring this up because in its Friday, April 22 edition, the Jerusalem Post's magazine decided to cynically take a broadside at Arutz-7 and all Moshiach-believers by publishing a question about the b'racha recited over the seeing of the Moshiach. But the attack was put in perspective when, on the same page, one of the Post's editors decided to repeat the rasha's argument, that all those divine mitzvot are just too "burdensome".
The Post's writer totally overlooks the insight of Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch that with the service comes the reward: the land of milk and honey. In fact, the editor, normally very insightful in his arguments, puts forward one very nonsensical theory regarding the land for which he has so much disregard: we are jettisoning Gush Katif because it represents us acting as Pharaoh, ruling over the poor Arabs ( "Palestinians" ) who we employed. Never mind that nobody forced these Arabs to work for us, and that nobody ever used their babies' blood for beauty baths, or used their children as fillers in the walls they built.
The writer even blames Israel for not training them as engineers, doctors and lawyers (as a doctor, I think we in Israel have plenty enough lawyers as it is). But I personally can testify that in November 1981, the physicians at Tel Hashomer Hospital were giving lectures to Arabs from the territories, trainees learning to become radiology technicians. And I would wager that similar training programs probably existed in other fields, as well.
In any case, the argument of the rasha goes deeper, and I would like to offer an explanation for it. Recently, Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow passed away. In his From Jerusalem and Back, Bellow airs both the right- and the left-wing views of the "territories" of Yehuda-Shomron-Aza (Yesha). The left-wing view comes from the mouth of Professor Tzvi Lamm: Israel "lost sight of the true reason for the founding of the state - the rescue mission - and became power-intoxicated... with the overbearing self-righteousness of our 'historical rights' to the land." Not "Land", but "land"; and not Biblical rights, nor divinely-promised rights, but "historical rights". Because Lamm, and the rasha, need to deny God in this whole picture.
The Left must get Israel out of Yesha because God promised it to Israel. And because it's the God-fearing, kipah-wearing Jews who live there. And because if they allowed Israel to stay in Yesha, then the Left might have to admit that even pre-1967, Green Line Israel is only theirs by the grace of God. But the Haggadah says the rasha is one who "kafar ba'ikar", he denies the role of God in history. So, he makes up nonsensical rationalizations for his Disengagement, such as equating Israel with Pharaoh. And the rasha asks: "What is this service to you?" Why do you bother to work, to serve in the army, to develop this world, if you attribute your success, your accomplishments and your very security to God? And of course, why do you bother with "burdensome" religious service?
And the answer is "ba'avur zeh", because we do this service , God crowns our meager efforts with success. True, we Jews didn't have the power to lift our little fingers to get ourselves out of Egypt. God did for us all that we read about in this Haggadah. But now he gives us the strength to perfect His world. And he gave us His Land, to work it. And He crowned our efforts with success, enabling us to build a modern society out of a wilderness. And enabling us to secure and protect that society. Not with nonsensical "peace " plans like Oslo, Geneva and other Disengagements, but with our efforts (this "service " you view as "burdensome"), blessed with success by the Almighty Himself.
Such is the education of the Seder night, and of the Pesach holiday. Certainly, this country has failed in properly educating its Jewish children. With 50% of the country having no meaningful recollection of the Six Day War (being under the age of 45), they still divide Eretz Yisrael into pre-1967 and post-1967 Israel ("this is Israel, those are territories"), just like Professor Lamm. Instead, they could have been taught that both 1948 and 1967 were battles in one long war, one long struggle of the Jew in history. The history from Avraham Avinu until Moshiach - a history we read to all our children, every Seder night.