Education

 Dear Friends,

Of all the significance invested in the Passover festival, one is best-known: Chag HaCherut, the celebration of freedom of the Jewish People from the yoke of the Pharaohs 3,340 years ago. From the famously emphatic "Avadim hayinu, ata Bnei Chorin" ("Slaves we were, now we are Free") of the Passover Haggadah to the maror , salt water and charoseth , the Passover Seder is designed primarily to remind us that we are today the descendants of slaves freed by divine action under the leadership of Moshe Rabbeinu, whose name is invoked only once in the traditional Haggadah .

This great deliverance initiated a period of national independence and accomplishment for the Jewish People in the Land of Israel, with some missteps:
• the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian Exile in 586 b.c.e., followed by the relatively rapid return to the Land of Israel from 537 b.c.e. in the time of Koresh (Cyrus), King of Persia, and the recovery of our national autonomy;
• the advent of Greek rule under Alexander the Great of Macedonia in 332 b.c.e., followed by the great chapter of liberation led by the Maccabee between 168 and 165 b.c.e., and
• the subsequent entry of the Romans under Pompey in 63 b.c.e.
All these events impacted on Jewish life in Israel and abroad, but always within the framework of religious and cultural freedom of our people. The Jews went from sovereignty to autonomy, and from autonomy to sovereignty, maintaining however their national Jewish character in the Land of Israel.

Three events dramatically overturned almost 14 centuries of Jewish independence and/or national autonomy in the Land of Israel:
• the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 c.e. and the fall of Masada in 73 c.e.;
• the fall of Betar, last bastion of national struggle against the Romans, in 135 c.e., and the subsequent expulsion of Jews from large areas of the Land of Israel and the prohibition of national expression;
• the rise of the Roman Emperor Constantine who imposed Christianity in his empire and published the first anti-Jewish laws in Europe , sparking the rise of official and/or State anti-Semitism on that continent which culminated in the monstrous climax of Nazi Germany.

The freedom gained in the deliverance from Egypt, with all its national expressions, was lost from the second century c.e., beginning "the long night of the Jewish People" on the national level, 18 centuries of Exile and 16 Centuries of growing anti-Semitism encouraged by the Catholic Church, its Orthodox offshoots and later Protestant rivals.

By comparison with these lengthy millennia of persecution, to praise and appreciate our recovered national freedom of the last nearly 63 years of modern Jewish independence and sovereignty in Israel since 1948 might seem too trivial. It seems trivial to praise the achieved freedom after we were oppressed, excluded, deported, harassed, persecuted, murdered, for so many centuries. The reality, however, is in many respects more complex, perhaps especially so from the point of view of Jewish freedom in the present. Undoubtedly, as Jews, we have our freedom - and, better still, our national freedom - in the sovereign State of Israel, the Jewish State. We cannot say the same of our brethren in many, countries where they live. "Being Jewish" is a small burden, the reason for creating all sorts of euphemisms in reference both to Jews and Judaism itself (anything is preferred to the use of the words "Jew" or "Jewish"). Many examples to illustrate this issue:
• With a group of San Diego Maccabi leaders, we recently visited several Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, where many Jews don't publicly upfront their Jewish ethnicity or adherence to Judaism because, if these were known, Jewish athletes might lose the support of their sponsors, Jewish professionals might suffer difficulties in their career progress, or worse: Jews in general might expose themselves to violent hatred of many of their fellow citizens (the Hungarian neo-Nazi party, for example, has 17% of the votes).
• We need not live in Venezuela – a country once grateful to the contribution of its Jewish citizens which today applies a permanent State anti-Semitism – to feel the march of anti-Jewish sentiment.
• Today, attacks from the European Left on Israel openly charge the Jewish State with genocide and Nazi leanings, and this violent hatred is projected onto Jewish communities in many countries.
Although freedom and authentic Jewish expression are possible certainly in American and Canadian large cities, the situation of our freedom as people living in the West, not to mention the situation of Jewish communities such as that in Iran, is at least delicate, noticeably weaker since the advent of the new millennium.

Therefore, the celebration of our freedom from the yoke of Pharaoh which brought us me'avdut le'cherut, from slavery to freedom, and our new national liberty recovered in the mid-twentieth century after all those many centuries of deadly oppression and persecution by the hand of feudal lords, of the Crusaders, of the Inquisition, of Islamic rulers, of Nazis and other anti-Semitic killers, is not and cannot be a trivial matter, because we are still struggling to be free. The freedom achieved from Egypt on Passover, plus our "route map" – the Torah received on Shavuot and our national life in the Land of Israel – made of us the great people that gave the world the ethical principles of Western civilization and produced so many extraordinary thinkers, scientists, artists and philosophers even in the centuries of our oppression. Today, within our newfound freedom in Israel, and with the Jewish freedoms weakening in many parts of the world, we should all the more appreciate the national freedom we once achieved from Egypt, and the freedom we enjoy today in the State of Israel, and, at the same time, we should energetically increase the strength of our demands for Jewish rights and freedoms in all countries.

May God grant that this Seder inspires us to recover the outstanding significance of the National Freedom of Pessach.

May God bless this gathering of our cherished ones around the
Passover Table in loving embrace and meaningful dialogue.

And May this Seder and all our future Seders
be celebrated in times of
liberation and redemption of our People
and of all men and women of good deeds!

Chag Pessach Sameach!
Chazak ve'ematz!

Rabbi Carlos A. Tapiero
Deputy Director-General & Director of Education
Maccabi World Union