Queens Jewish Link
Connecting the Queens Jewish Community Approaching its 50th anniversary, Laniado Hospital – Sanz Medical Center reflects on five decades...
In every generation a person is obliged to see himself as if he had come out of Egypt.
– The Haggadah of Pesach
With Pesach barely a month away, one aspect of the Festival of Freedom is dominating my thoughts in recent days. Dayeinu. It would be enough for us; a popular Seder night responsive song.
In Egypt, we were beautiful
As G-d’s children, recognizable,
Kept our language and names,
As Hebrews, we were clad.
I perch, fatigued, in the eerily illuminated chambers of the Pharaoh’s palace. I am a lowly slave, whom people jeer at as they pass or don’t even grace with the courtesy of a contemptuous sneer. Even the little children smirk disdainfully at me. I rub my eyes dejectedly.
On the first night of Nisan, we start counting until the moon is full on the 15th of the month. This is Seder night, our annual birthday party as a nation. Some 3,000 years ago, we were an enslaved people yearning for liberation from a tyrant. With the Haggadah, every year we gather to start our calendar anew by retelling the saga of the birth of the unbreakable soul of our nation. Pesach reminds us that we have a powerful, unique neshamah (soul) as individuals and are also a part of the greater soul of the Jewish People.
Recap: The new house looks like a haunted house. Yehudis and her father meet a nice rebbetzin and her daughter. The daughter is the same age as Yehudis and tells her about the theme of their Bais Yaakov yearbook. Yehudis will need some baby pictures; only, for some reason, whenever she asks her father where her baby pictures are, he is very evasive.
