Shalom Friends;
This year’s Pesach vort is being sponsored by Avraham and Miriam Deutsch and family of Efrat dedicated lilui nishmas for his Father: Mordechai ben Avraham Aba and Sara and for his Mother: Sara Rotza bat Tzion bat Avraham Yaakov and Chaya Leah. To the Deutsch family, many thanks for your sponsorship and for your continued kindnesses.
You can celebrate a Simcha — a birth, a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, a Chassuna or other Simcha event in your life, or commemorate a Yahrtzeit of a loved one, or for whatever other reason by sponsoring a Parshat HaShevua.
Please forward to your relatives and friends and encourage them to sponsor a Parshat HaShevua. And please be in contact with me with any questions, or for further details.
Best Regards,
Moshe Burt
olehchadash@yahoo.com
skype: mark.burt3
***********************************
Each year, for now twenty-eight years, and the twenty-fifth Pesach in Eretz Yisrael, this author has emailed this rendition of Dayenu quoted from the book “Dear Brothers” by former Arutz Sheva columnist Haggai Segal, as it has become tradition with me from prior to my Aliyah.
Each year, this author tries to touch on factors, insights and lessons, learned or needing relearning, which affect the state of B’nei Yisrael — right here and right now.
This year’s Pesach vort is written as Israel approaches it’s 75th year of modern-day nationhood on 5 Iyyar (26 April) and again written against the background of the Russian invasion of the nation of Ukraine, with its current president and prime minister — both Jews, probably in name only. This author has long been disabused of the notion of Jews and Israel having any loyalty or positive feelings toward the nation of Ukraine and its President who attempts continuously to lay guilt trips upon the Israeli government seeking Israeli support. It only takes a cursory review of the Ukraine’s past history to date — brutal cruelty and treatment of the Jews during the Sho’a that even rivals the Nazis as well as rampant anti-semitism to this day, coupled with total opposition to Israel in every United Nations vote.
As we approach Pesach 5783, it seems to this author that this quoted rendition of “Dayenu” is as vital now as it was in the first year that I emailed this vort out or, for that matter, as vital as when it was quoted in Segal’s compilation of the book in its copyright year 1988.
In the Book “Dear Brothers”, the story is told how Pesach 5728 (1968) was approaching when the first group of Pioneers endeavored to establish themselves in Chevron. Among this group were Rabbis Haim Druckman, Eliezer Waldman, Moshe Levinger, Shlomo Aviner and others.
We pick up the story as the participants, “Sixty people sat down to that historical first Seder…” in Chevron:
“Another participant was the author Moshe Shamir, formerly affiliated with the leftist Hashomer Hatzair (the Young Guard). As he did with each of the celebrants during the Seder, Rabbi Druckman asked Shamir to make some comments appropriate to the festival. The others braced themselves for the minor unpleasantness that was sure to result…”
But at every Seder since then; other guests have repeated the Drosh that Moshe Shamir delivered that first Passover Seder in Chevron and so I try to give it over each year to my friends and relatives on Pesach via the Internet and at the Seder:
“The fourteen verses in the song Dayenu (It would have sufficed) have drawn the attention of the commentators throughout the ages. Why should we imply that we could forgo even one of the gifts given to us by Hashem three thousand years ago? How would we have gotten along at all without every one of them? The truth is that this part of the Haggadah has only one aim: to teach us how each and every generation of Jews tends to settle for the achievements of the past, to settle for what its forefathers had accomplished — and to rest on its laurels, with no aspiration for anything not achieved thus far. We, too, right here have that same tendency to say Dayenu — ‘It would have sufficed for us.’ The State of Israel? Dayenu. Unified Jerusalem and liberated Hebron? Dayenu. Wasn’t it just last year at the Seder [before the 6-day War — MB] that we said, ‘If Hashem had given us Israel but had not given us Jerusalem and Hebron — dayenu? That’s why we’ve got to know that we’ll be facing many more ‘dayenus’ until we reach full redemption.”
The book recounts that Rabbi Druckman stood up and kissed Shamir’s forehead.
This author has been watching the Faith and Fate video series on YouTube which is a Rabbi Berel Wein Destiny Series. Particularly grabbing was Rabbi Wein’s opening monologue in the video entitled “A New Beginning. 1948 – 1957.” The written word in no way does justice to the video production of Rabbi Wein’s words, but this author will try.
Rabbi Wein begins his monologue:
“On the Sunday after the declaration of the State of Israel, I, together with 20,000 other Jews in C?hicago, gathered at the Chicago stadium [this author’s understanding is that the venue had to actually be an arena] for a program to commemorate this historic event.
The program began by the raising of the Israeli flag to the rafters of the stadium. When that happened, a sea of tears engulfed everyone who was present. The whole 2,000 years of exile poured out of us. The Holocaust, everything was loosed. 20,000 Jews and there were another 20,000 Jews in the parking lot who couldn’t get in who were united as no other time in their lifetime.”
Watching this video, this author drew parallels which assuredly couldn’t be a “Chiddush” of Moshe Burt alone. Those being the parallels between our liberation from persecution and bondage in Mitzrayim and modern-day Israel independence, nationhood and sovereignty.
Just as Hashem brought about the liberation of Am Yisrael from Mitzrayim (Egypt), so too HaKodesh Borchu brought about the Jews’ return to their Homeland — Eretz Yisrael as we watched, and continue to watch through, derech hateva; the political, diplomatic, military and economic machinations of 75 years ago through to this very day.
We have long learned that 600,000 B’nei Yisrael left Mitzrayim at the liberation. “The Jewish Timeline Encylopedia,” by Mattis Kantor, page 26) “The Jewish Timeline Encylopedia” notes:
The B’nei Yisrael who left Egypt on the 15th of Nissan included 600,000 men between twenty to sixty years of age. In normal demographic extensions, this would add up to a population of approximately 2,000,000 people.
Other sources, such as the Artscroll Stone Chumash, in its note on Perek 12, posukim 37-42 in Parshat Bo (page 359), indicate that the total population of Am Yisrael leaving Mitzrayim (which this author could surmise may have included the erev rav — the mitzri groupies who joined with the Jews) could have been 3,000,000.
Regarding “The Jewish Timeline Encylopedia” estimate of 2,000,000 people, this author recalls that the above-mentioned video indicates that while the population of Israel in 1948 was 650,000, it had grown to over 2,500,000 by close of the 1950s.
We learn that only 20% of Am Yisrael left Mitzrayim, which meant that the total population of Am Yisrael may have reached or exceeded 10,000,000. The Artscroll Stone Chumash renders to English Sefer Shemos, Perek 13, posuk 18:
“…The B’nei Yisrael were armed [CHaMuShiM in Hebrew] when they went up from Egypt.”
Rabbi Daniel Lapin, in his vort “Only The Few,” dated in April, 2018 notes on Sefer Shemos, Perek 13, posuk 18:
“…and the children of Israel went up ‘fifthed’ (1/5) out of the land of Egypt.” [CHaMuShiM rendered to English by Rabbi Lapin as 1/5th, indicating 20% of Am Yisrael left Mitzrayim which this author was told authoritatively is a citing from a Midrash Chazal]
Similarly, the video mentioned above cited Israel’s population in 1948 as 650,000 Jews. By the end of the 1950s, the population of Israel grew to 2,500,000, just over 1/5th of the world’s population of Jews in 1960 of 12,079,000 as cited from the Jewish Virtual Library website at 20.7%. Baruch Hashem that in this year, the population of Jews in Israel seems close to approaching, if not already, a majority of Jews in the world.
Upon completing the singing of “Dayenu,” we say, as rendered to English in “The Measure for Measure Haggadah” published by Mosad HaRav Kook (page 143):
“…How much more so should we be grateful to the Omni-present for the doubled and redoubled goodness that He has bestowed upon us: for He has brought us out of Egypt, and carried out judgements against them, and against their idols, and smote their first-born, and gave us their wealth, and split the sea for us, and took us through it on dry land, and drowned our oppressors in it, and supplied our needs in the desert for forty years, and fed us the manna, and gave us the Shabbat, and brought us to Har Sinai, and gave us the Torah, and brought us into the Land of Israel and built for us the Beit Hamikdash to atone for all our sins.”
This author might add to the above citing: How much more should Am Yisrael, both we in Eretz Yisrael and our brethren — the Jews throughout the world, express our gratefulness to Hashem that we live in the times of our return to Eretz Yisrael as a sovereign nation?
It stands repeating that in his vort at that first Pesach Seder in Hevron, Moshe Shamir spoke about generations of Jews settling for what was, rather than aspiring to achieve further and seizing opportunities to fulfill these further aspirations. But today, it seems that not only is there the tendency not to aspire further, but to actually give up, to relinquish that already achieved. In our generation, segments of Israeli society have totally lost track of why they are here — what brought them here, or have not kicked the subservience to the will of the nations habit. Jews worldwide, are totally out of touch with Judaism’s traditions, spirituality and even our contemporary history, let alone our history dating back to the Avos and the affliction, dehumanization, cruelty, oppression and enslavement of our forefathers by Pharaoh and the Mitzriyim (the Egyptian people).
We can only hope and pray that our current government in Israel, professed to be dedicated to such issues of reforming the justice system, Eretz Yisrael, sovereignty and national security, seriously teaching Judaism’s history and more, can kick the will of the nations habit and actually succeed in achieving these goals. May we, collectively, not be satisfied with stagnation, but keep reaching for the Ge’ula Shlaima.
May we, the B’nei Yisrael be zocha that our brethren — the refugee families from Gush Katif be permanently settled and be made totally whole — be totally restituted for all that was stolen from them, that the thrice expelled families of Amona be restored to their rebuilt homes and the oft-destroyed Yeshiva buildings in Homesh be rebuilt, all at total government expense; due to alt-leftist-agendized, supreme court legalized Yassamnik gunpoint. Baruch Hashem that our dear brother Jonathan Pollard is now in his third year at home in Eretz Yisrael and has embarked on a new chapter in his life. May Esther Yocheved bat Yechiel Avraham have an aliyah in Shemayim and may her spirit and memory continue to lift Jonathan to at least 120 years. May the MIAs be liberated alive and returned to us in ways befitting Al Kiddush Hashem — as with the return in April, 2019, via Russia, of the remains of Zachariah Baumel, as should the remains of the two chayalim from the Gaza War of nine years ago. May we have the courage and strength to stand up and physically prevent the possibility of Chas V’Challila any future eviction of Jews from their homes and prevent Chas V’Challila the handing of Jewish land over to anyone, let alone to enemies sworn to Israel’s and Judaism’s destruction and eradication. And may we soon and finally see the total end to the Communist Chinese corona virus pandemic and all like viruses. May we fulfill Hashem’s blueprint of B’nei Yisrael as a Unique people — an Am Segula, not to be reckoned with as with “the nations” and may we be zocha to see the Moshiach, the Ge’ula Shlaima, as Dov Shurin sings; “Ki Karov Yom Hashem Al’Kol HaGoyim”, the Ultimate Redemption, bimhayrah b’yamainu — speedily, in our time”, — Achshav, Chik Chuk, Miyad, Etmol!!!
Good Yom Tov, Good Shabbos! Chag Kosher V’Some’ach and, remember: BE THERE at the Pesach Seder!
———————————————————
Moshe Burt, an Oleh, is a commentator on news and events in Israel and Founder and Director of The Sefer Torah Recycling Network. He lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh.
*********************************************************************