Originally published April 18, 2024
As I prepare for Pesach and the seders, I am painfully aware that this year is not like every other year. It is Israel’s first wartime Pesach, if you discount prior periods of conflict that stretched on for years, like the First and Second Intifada. It is the first Pesach observance in the history of the Jewish people when over 100 of our people have been hostages in Gaza. And while I have always been mindful of the diversity within our Jewish community and within many of our families, this year that beautiful diversity has turned towards painful division. Many families within our Jewish community hold vastly different, even opposing, views on Israel, and as we consider the story of the haggadah, the questions it raises around freedom, hope for a better future, the meaning of slavery and oppression, it might feel impossible to mend those divides and come together around the table.
And yet, coming together around the table, despite our differences, to tell the story of our people, is at the heart of who we are as a tribe. If these issues are top of your mind as you approach your family’s seder, I invite you to take a look at this resource from the Union for Reform Judaism for having hard conversations at the seder table. And for all of us, as we are painfully aware of the broken rift in our people, as far too many homes have an empty chair in them, with a loved one imprisoned in Gaza, or one of the over 6000 casualties since October 7, I share this beautiful reading for Yachatz, the part of our seder when we break the middle matzah in half, from my colleagues Rabbi Alona Lisitsa and Rabbi Ari Ballaban:
This year, our heart also is split in half.
Half of it is here, around the table, filled with great joy and gratitude for family and for togetherness, for our freedom, for our full cups, and for all the goodness we merit.
And the second half is in Gaza, with our hostages, for they have no freedom, no redemption, and no seder.
Simultaneously, our heart exists in many places in the Land, in houses where dwell families of the hostages, where around their table there are empty places.
Our heart is broken to pieces.
This pain is sharp and piercing; this pain now feels normal.
It too deserves a place in our seder.
כוונה ל”יחץ”
[למקרה אם חס וחלילה לא יוחזרו שבויינו]
השנה גם לבינו חצוי, חציו כאן, סביב השולחן, מתמלא בשמחה ובהודייה גדולה על המשפחה ועל היחד שלנו, על חרותנו, על כוסנו הרוויה, על כל הטוב הזה שזכינו לו.
וחציו השני בעזה, עם שבויינו, שאין להם לא חרות ולא גאולה, ולא סדר.
בעת ובעונה אחת, הלב נמצא במקומות רבים בארץ, בבתים בהם משפחות השבויים וסביב שולחנם מקומות ריקים.
הלב שלנו שבור לרסיסים.
הכאב הזה חד, מפלח, הכאב הזה נשחק בשגרה.
ניתן לו מקום בסדר שלנו
Rabbi Miriam Farber Wajnberg
