מועדים לשיחה; מהדורה משפחתית, חג הפסח, דיינו, במחשבה נוספתCeremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Pesah, Dayeinu, Further Thoughts
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1The Exodus was more than an event in the past. It was a precursor of redemption in the future. Israel, as Moshe warned, would not dwell securely in its land. It would forget its moral and spiritual vocation. It would be attracted to the pagan culture of its neighbours. By so doing it would lose its reason for existence and find itself unable, at times of crisis, to summon the shared vision and collective energy needed to prevail against neighbouring imperial powers. It would suffer defeat and exile. But despair would never prevail. In the past, God had brought His people from slavery to freedom and from exile to the land, and therefore He would do so again. The Jewish people never completely lost faith in God, because its prophets knew that God would never completely lose faith in His people. History intimated destiny. What happened once would happen again. That is what lies behind the words with which the Haggada begins: “Now we are here; next year in the land of Israel. Now – slaves; next year we shall be free.” The Jewish people kept the vision alive. It is not too much to say that the vision kept the Jewish people alive….
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2That is what Pesaḥ was during more than eighteen centuries of exile and dispersion: a seed planted in Jewish memory, waiting to be activated, to grow. Without it, Jews would certainly have disappeared. Lacking hope of return – hope tempered by faith into a certainty-like steel – they would have made their peace with their condition, merged into their surrounding societies and ambient cultures, and vanished, like every other culture deprived of a home. Pesaḥ, like a seed frozen in suspended animation, contained the latent energy that led Jews in the twentieth century to create the single most remarkable accomplishment in the modern world, the rebirth of Israel, the land, the state, the nation, and the people. Mikha’s vision, and Yeḥezkel’s, and Moshe’s, came true.
ג׳
3“Pesaḥ and the Rebirth of Israel,” The Jonathan Sacks Haggada
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4☛ REFLECT
Rabbi Sacks connects the Exodus to the modern return to Zion. How is this also connected to the poem Dayeinu?
Rabbi Sacks connects the Exodus to the modern return to Zion. How is this also connected to the poem Dayeinu?
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5QUESTIONS TO ASK AT YOUR SEDER
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61. Would it really have been “enough” if God had stopped at any of these stages?
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72. What do you see as the message behind listing these fifteen stages in Dayeinu?
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83. Where do you think the story of the Exodus actually ends?