Messages from April 2018

The Final Two Days of Passover Born Free? Live Free

           The main idea of Passover is not merely abstaining from bread, cake, crackers, and other leavened products, it is to identify with the theme of the holiday. Freedom is what we focus on during Passover. We were freed from the Egyptians, as we say in the Haggadah, Had not the Holy One taken our ancestors out of Egypt, then we, our children, and our children’s children would have remained enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. In 1922, in Luban, Communist (i.e. oppressive) Russia, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein asked the following question in a sermon: How can we celebrate freedom when we have been constantly persecuted, exiled, and harassed? Are we really free if we are denied equal rights and protection in the countries in which we live? (Although we have been blessed with freedom in America, it is a new phenomenon.) Getting back to the question asked almost 100 years ago in a small Russian town; how can we (Jews living under the violent oppression of communism) celebrate a festival representing freedom?