In order for Viewpoint 2B Jewish, it has to have Jewish interests and solidarity in it somewhere. And it cannot only interpret Jewish history through the lens of what another group or people has or has and suffers. Hi everyone, welcome to Wanderer in Jews with Michal Annam. Ammichal, Annam is suddenly not with us for this episode. And this podcast is our way of trying to unpack big questions about the Jews and the Jews are asking right now. We don't have it all figured out, but we will try to figure it out together. As we say every week, our favorite part of each show is really hearing from your our listeners, so please feel free to send in questions, feedback, concerns, disagreements, pretty much anything. You can email us at
[email protected]. And I'll just give a special shout out to Moshe S. from Maryland, who got in touch. Son does an email and he said, "I appreciate that you're trying to reach a young, thoughtful audience and using the language of wandering, which is the opposite of judging." So thanks Moshe, that's really great to hear. And please keep listening. We have some really exciting news serious and guest coming up, which leads me to our guest today and our topic of conversation today, which is something that I believe is in all of our minds in this hectic week ahead. We are going to be talking today about Pasover. Today we have an extremely special guest here. I'm going to introduce Shabai David Wolpy to really discuss together and think about why why Pasover is so important, why does it resonate for so many Jews? And what can we learn from it in 2025? We Wolpy has a very long bio, but I'll just highlight some of the amazing things that he does. He's the Maxwell-Brabbi Emeritus of Saine Temple. He serves as the ADL's inaugural Rabinq Fellow. And he is my fellow scholar in residence at the Maimonides Fund. So I'm extremely lucky and blessed to call Rewolpy a colleague and someone that I have learned from and with, which is really exciting. Rewolpy has been named the most influential rabbi in America by Newsweek, and one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world by the Jerusalem Post. Wolpy, it's really great to have you here. It's good to see you outside the office. Yes, yes it is. Rewolpy, I was going to start with like an easy question, but instead I'm going to shift to a hard one. Okay, I know that in LA your community has Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Persian, all that. Pasover. Okay, do you want to be, are you happy being an Ashkenazi Jew on Pasover? Or is this the Holy Day where everybody should convert to become a Sephardic Jew? Yes, they all should, but they won't. Well, since I'm a vegetarian, and many years ago, David Gelingen, who's a Posek, a religious decider, I suppose you would say in English, in Israel, wrote a long chuva about how the forbiddenness of Keetneo, that is, rice, beans, corn, nuts, things like that, all the gooms of how that came about, which was how Ashkenazi forbidden, then Spardium don't, which is really because Ashkenazi didn't have it, so they assumed that it was like leaven, and so they forbade it. Anyway, he wrote a long chuva and said, especially for vegetarians who have a hard time getting protein, if you don't eat meat or chicken or fish, it's permissible. So I went proudly before my congregation and said, this is what the chuva says, and I want you all to know, I wouldn't do this without telling you, I'm going to start eating Keetneo, and there was a lovely woman who was since passed away, Rose Farcus, who was a survivor, and told me, Rabbi, it was a beautiful sermon, but you still eat trife. So I would say, yes, there is a divide there, but a couple of Ashkenazi, having gone now to Persian saders, say, look, I'm not going to go to someone's sader and not eat what they make, and so they have sort of gotten acculturated, but it's still a very strong cost of. Right, but I am hearing from you that pests are humane of us. I do. Yes. I do. Yes. Welcome to our part. Exactly. But there was a little bit about Passover growing up. I know that you are not just a Rabbi, but a Rabbi's son. What are some of the traditions that you grew up with that you still think about? So my, actually, my favorite part of Passover was Bidiqat Khomeits the night before, when my father would go around with a candle all around the house and try to find Khomeits, some of which he had planted, of course, because they cleaned the house so well beforehand that he had to plant a few pieces of bread so that we could find it, just because the darkness and the candle sort of inaugurated the mystery of it. And then actually many years later, on my daughter's botmitsvah, she had par-shadbo, and I talked to her instead of giving a sermon. I just brought her up just like you are, and I talked to her, and we talked about Lail Shemurim, and that was sort of the theme of her botmitsvah. So I think that, and then, of course, all the things that everyone remembers, being the youngest for a while when my younger brother was, they're six years between us, so he was too young to do the four questions and opening the door for El-Yahu, and you know, somebody inevitably kicking the bottom of the table so that the cup shook a little bit. All of those, all of the traditions from the Haggadah, including the struggle to stay up till the end, which especially as a little kid, I remember very well. And then the second night for us was the synagogue sator, every year because my father conducted the synagogue sator. And I actually remember that with great fondness because it was really, at least in those days, a lot of people came to the synagogue, and it was very much community sator. Yeah, as a fellow rabbi's daughter, I remember one, uh, synagogue sator we had in Montevideo in Uruguay, and the reason I remember it so fondly is that we put it play, and I got to be God for everybody there. So that was actually a big, a big highlight for us. Yeah, it was a big step, and for me, I think growing up, I don't know if I should can as him do this as well, but we would actually really dress up. We would take pillowcases and stuff them with things and dress up, and and there's different customs depending like Moroccan or Egyptian, of like some questions and answers that you do, like where you come from, I come from Egypt, where you're going to the promised land, and something really very, very, um, children friendly and like tactile about Passover. Yeah, I think that there are, there are people walking around and beating each other with leaks and so on. Scallions versus scallions, right? And then I know from, uh, from Sephardic tradition and Mizrahi traditions, but, but I don't think exists in Ashkenazi. Yeah, it's okay. Well, we're really happy for everybody to borrow, because if you want to and we borrow as well. But, but you know, I was actually looking at some data and I believe that the said there, right, of Passover is the most kept Jewish ritual in the world. Yes. More than Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, more than any other Jewish ritual or Jewish holiday. What do you think it is about the said there on Passover? They really makes it so extraordinarily popular. So here's my first answer since I can't, I probably have more than one is think about all the times, Eliahu Hanabi, who, who was the, the prophet, he doesn't die in the Tanakh and so he's the one that comes back and announces the coming of the Messiah. So think about the times that he's supposed to come during the year. End of Shabbat, during the Sadr of Pesach, end of Yom Kippur, at a Breet me law, you have Eliahu Hanabi, all of those times are family times. And I think, and in fact, on Pesach, the Haftarah reads, they, "Shiv live Avot al-Banim, believe, bani-mal Avot al-Botal, malrute turn the hearts of parents to children and children to parents." And I think Pesach is the most family of all holidays. I mean, yes, on Yom Kippur maybe you sit with your family, but you know, it's not a family holiday. For Jews, I think the reason that Thanksgiving is almost the only holiday that Americans celebrate is because it also is a family holiday. And I think more than anything else, more even than the themes, more than it's the sociology of Pesach that we're together as a family. Then also, the themes of oppression and freedom and slavery and liberation, they are perpetual themes in human life and politics. And so there's always something both old and new to talk about on every Pesach. Yeah, I've been thinking actually that there's something both really particularistic about Passover and Mirror Universalistic. I've been thinking that the Exodus story is really universal, right? Like Egypt, Pharaoh, Freed, Moses, Promised Land, and it's actually influenced the civil rights movement, the liberation theology, American revolution. But I think the saider night, that's like really particular. That's been shaped by Jews, for Jews, and really by Jewish families, like you were saying, and really characterizes something very unique about the Jewish experience. And also the Jewish experience in adversity. I keep thinking about the fact that a gun burger, she was in Gaza for 15 months and she literally kept Passover, right, in the tunnels of Gaza. Yeah. And what makes it Jewish, almost to an extreme is it is the only meal I think that I know of in any tradition anywhere, that is actually guided by a book. And that's very Jewish. It's like, how do we eat this meal?
Well, let's look in the book. Right. And the presence of the Haggadah is a really amazing phenomenon in religious life. And one of the reasons why the particularistic and universalistic speaks so eloquently to Pesok is, look at the diversity of Haggadah that you can get from some that are deeply learned and rooted in Jewish texts. And then there are some that are very universalistic because it really does at least allow for both of those. What do you use usually? What kind of Haggadah do you use? We usually use the rabbinical assembly Haggadah. So we were sort of straight down the middle. When I was growing up, like almost all Americans, we used the Maxwell House Haggadah, which was a phenomenon that somehow Maxwell published this Haggadah that all Americans use seem to use. How about you? I used the Sephardic one. I don't know how to differentiate it. That's the one. That is actually how it is exactly which one you go to. But we also use one that like a Syrian specifically one, like a Syrian Egyptian. And it actually has some like Arabic parts to it. And my kids go to a Sephardic school. So they learned some parts like Arabic. And now our southern table will literally talk about how my kids grandparents, my husband's parents, left Egypt because they left Egypt. So there's like something very powerful there about like the story of living Egypt. Let me ask you a question because you, I think the first time I ever heard of you. I know what's going on. Okay. So you know what's going on. But it is true like the first time that I heard of you was actually in 2001 when I remember just like reading a news article about this rabbi in Los Angeles, who I'm going to tell you how I remember it. I'm not saying it's exactly what you said. But I remember reading that you said something along the lines of, you don't need to believe the Exodus happened historically exactly the way that the Exodus said it did to still feel the magic of Passover. Yes. That was like, that was like that one viral back then before things went really viral. It's going to be on my, on my eulogy. I am. Okay. I mean, so here I'll give you the very abbreviated version, which is it was Pesach. And I said, look, we make historical claims and historical claims are different from theological claims. Theological claims are God exists. Historical claims are this happened in this place at this time. Now that we have a state of Israel and we can actually do archaeology, we have a much better idea of what parts of the Tanakh align and what don't. And the Tanakh doesn't view history the same way we do. And so you don't have to believe that this is a literal historical account. Actually, a huge article had just appeared by a bunch of archaeologists saying, look, this is not which every modern archaeologist agrees if they're not influenced by religious considerations. And I wanted to say, but I want you to know when you hear this, it doesn't matter. Well, some people thought it mattered. And so to this day, every Pesach, people will say things like, why should you celebrate this holiday if you don't believe that this happened? And what do you tell them? What I tell them, it depends how they say it. But what I tell them essentially is that you don't have to believe that 600,000 men stood at Sinai to believe that the Torah has a divine origin. And you don't have to believe that the sea split the way it's described to believe that in every generation, God liberates Jews. What I said to the congregation is, look, it happened in your generation, Persian Jews in 1980 by the tens of thousands, maybe by the hundreds of thousands, escaped an evil dictator. So someone once described to myth that something that never happened, but is always happening. And I feel like the point of the Torah is not to give you specific historical information. It is to tell you how to orient yourself in the world and what the spiritual truths are that matter to us. And are there historical kernels to much of it? And is some of it historically true? Yeah, I wrote a book about King David, I think a lot of the King David story is pretty detailed and therefore in different ways, most likely is based on some kind of historical fact. But I don't take it as, I don't take everything that is recounted in the Torah as literally historically true. Yeah. It just means what your saying reminds me of something that Mayor Buzagloss says. He's a Mizra'ach, he's a philosopher in Israel who does, he's a professor and he does work on mathematics, but then he writes about faith on the side. And he speaks about an additional approach to faith, which is both similar and different than when you just presented in which you don't even ask, is this truth or false? That's almost like the wrong question. For him, it's like, did I receive this from people that I listened to what they're telling me in a special way? Did my ancestors share this with me? Or something they want to give to me? I think that we inherited in a way that wasn't ultimately good for us. The idea that religion is an agreement with certain propositions. And that's never what Judaism was. Judaism was a pattern of life. And that was what really mattered was, are you part of the community? Do you support the community? Do you have behaviors that are consonant with the community? And we didn't have a catacism. You didn't have to say, and I believe this and I believe that and I believe that. It was really, I mean, I think to some extent it was Rambham who decided, there's a modern actually account of all this, Manacham Kelner wrote a book, "Does it you have to believe anything?" What's the quick answer? Yes, no, maybe. Depends. Okay, there we go. Okay. It depends on who you listen to. I mean, there are some obviously Rambham folks, so there are certain things that you have to believe. But he might not have thought when he had to ask people. Right, but I don't think he would have asked. I think he would have assumed if you're part of the community, you're part of this and I think that's how Judaism works best. Yeah. So let's actually take this to a direction. I think right now in Passover, if you were to give this speech around faith and what happened to be honest, I don't think it would make a big splash right now. Because I believe that the things that have become divisive right now are really different. So I know that one of the things that I'm hearing a lot about from people is saying we're having a seder, right? And we're celebrating the story of Jewish people. And we are living in the wake of October 7th. And there's all of this, this agreements in Jewish families, in the holiday that is about the family and that is about our spiritual DNA as a people. And I think the main dividing line that I hear would be between, I want to say it's loosely like Zionists and non Zionists or anti Zionists or in a different place it could be like pro-Trump anti-Trump, pro-DB anti-Politics. But I'm just curious. First of all, from a practical level as a rabbi who has passed through so many and counseled so many, what are your tips for how to do a seder in a way that doesn't ignore the disagreements but doesn't let them take over? I think it depends on your family and what the nature of the disagreement is. For some people it will actually be wiser not to address it at the seder because that's the only way you'll get through the seder without people leaving the table or screaming at each other. And I think for some, I know certain families where the tensions are so deep that that's the only way they could have a seder. For others I think it's probably useful at some point during the seder to have people just say what they believe without arguing. And just to be able to listen to them. But I also, my question would be what solidarity do you express with the Jewish people and how is that expressed? And the reason I say it that way is if the entirety of your approach to Judaism is to be an advocate for Palestinian rights and I think that there are, if you look for example a JVP's website, that's basically their approach to Judaism is entirely interpreted through Palestinian rights. Then I don't understand any solidarity that you actually have with your people. So I would like to know, especially on Pesach, can you express what solidarity you have with the Jewish people in order for a viewpoint to be Jewish. That's why I said Jewish voices for peace in order for a viewpoint to be Jewish, it has to have Jewish interests and solidarity in it somewhere. And it cannot only interpret Jewish history through the lens of what another group or people has or hasn't suffered. So I think you're establishing and I would argue Passover is that the birth of this is that solidarity, we're not just a religion, we don't have just principles of faith, we actually need to have, and now solidarity could look like different things but there has to be solidarity to follow Jews as part of what makes a state around the table together. I think that that is both true and also something that the Ashkenazi world could learn better from this fartic world because as I have seen in the Persian community as well,
it is the almost like the Anima, I mean the fundamental principle is not the coming of the Messiah, but that you have a tie to the Jewish world and to other Jews. Right. Does that mean then that there's certain voices or opinions that like are we drawing limits or boundaries around the Suther Table? I'm drawing limits around a viewpoint that is Jewish because views can be expressed by Jews without being Jewish viewpoints. So yes, I think in order to be a Jewish viewpoint, it has to have Jewish history solidarity, peoplehood as a part of that viewpoint. Otherwise, it's a viewpoint that's expressed by a Jew. Like I could tell you, I think that you know, I don't know. I think that Magnus Carlson is a great chess player. That's not a Jewish viewpoint. I would know nothing about that. Trust me. Yes, okay. It really is. But that's not a Jewish viewpoint. It's just a viewpoint expressed by a Jew. So let me read something to you. So Hannah, I hope I'm saying her name right, Hannah, I'm been there was the Jewish actress and comedian on a heat HBA show called Hacks, which I never heard of until I heard about her speech, but she recently gave a speech at the Human Rights Council award show denouncing Israel and it's Rohingya Gaza. And she cited her Jewish values the ones she learned in Hebrew school. Specifically she said she cited her Jewish values of asking questions and not trying away from her truth in the context of why she spoke to speak as a Jew. How does this, how does what you just said about Jewish solidarity being the underpinning of Jewish values relate to something like this speech in which she spoke as a Jew and said that questioning things is what led her to speak in this way. Well, I mean questioning things is a good thing. Right. Human things, right? I don't object. Well, most values are human things. They may be Jewish values too. I mean, you know, kindness is a Jewish value. It's also a human value. But I don't, I actually think that asking questions is far too neutral an enterprise to be cited as the value that allows you to get up at a speech and speak, you know, against the Jewish state and most of the Jewish people. So I think she would have to do better than that. I would send her back to Hebrew school. Yeah, or maybe like rethink about us, we do some things in Hebrew schools. Yes. So I mean, we think the kind of Hebrew school education that we give. Yeah, speaking of education, we have four children at the center, right? We speak about the wise one, right? The wicked one, the one who doesn't know how to ask and the one who's had his own English. Like innocent is a simple, simple, innocent. I'm just curious. What do you think about the Russia? The Russia the wicked one is one that kind of comes and according to the text that we read, basically is like, what is this thing that you're doing? And to me, by the way, what always stands out is that he doesn't include, like, you know, it's like what you're doing. And then there's like a very sharp response, right? Like how do you say it in English at that? Okay. Well, literally you hit his teeth, but that just means you reviewed what they write in in most of the haga dotas you review him. Right. But, so what's an example of a Russia, the Southern table? So in our day, I think anyone who does not feel themselves implicated in the Jewish and in in what's all of it you called the two covenants, you know, the covenant of history and the covenant of destiny. I think if you absent yourself from it, that is the modern equivalent of a Russia. If you say, I think what Israel is doing in Gaza is terrible and I'm grieved by it. But of course, I support the existence of the state of Israel. And I just wish that had a different government was doing things a different way. I don't have any problem. I mean, I may disagree with you or I may not, but I don't have any problem with that. That's certainly not a Russia. But if it's what all of you people are doing, which is often the criticism, that's absent in yourself from the Jewish people and that in our tradition has not gone well. Yeah. And again, I think there's something there you mentioned before. Sometimes when we speak of Judaism as a religion or as a faith, we forget how much we are actually part of a community. I always tell people about conversion that Ruth doesn't say, you're God, she starts with your people will be my people. And only at the very end, as she say, your God will be my God. Because conversion really starts with people who I've never, almost never had someone come to me and say, I read my monodies and now I want to be a Jew. Right. It's not intellectual. That's a rebroad. They connect to Jewish people or they're going to get married to a Jew and they enter a Jewish family and so on. And the truth is the Jews are sociological as well as the theological phenomenon. And that's one of the reasons that we have all the contention inside of Judaism is because we don't all believe the same thing. So I don't know whether this will come out before or after it's published, but the site Torah.com asked a bunch of people, what was shpisian? Would you bring to the pesah, say? They're mixing holidays. I'm mixing holidays. You always be with them. I actually wrote back originally a succo thing and they said, no, you didn't read this. This is for pesah. Right. And so that means who in Jewish history would you bring? And I chose Alicia Benabouyeh, who was the only rabbi that left the Jewish tradition and went to Rome because I wanted to come back and see that Rome is gone and they're still a saider. And I thought maybe he'd be a good ambassador to help people. Right. But the reason he is so unique as a Talmudic rabbi is not because he disagreed or argued or any of those things, but because he left. And that's the one thing you're not allowed to do in our tradition is to leave. Right. And that's a great activity for the Seder to go around and ask which historical figure would you like to be at the Seder with us right now. Let me ask you a question. Just another really big contemporary issue right now in 2025. And I'm also asking you have been a very public figure in the fight against anti-Semitism. You were identified for a long time with what was happening at Harvard and then leaving very publicly. Right. And there is a moment in the Seder that I always struggle with which is when we, you know, we say in every generation they stand up against the Stoias. And my struggle is because on the one hand it rings true. On the other hand, I kind of hate that we say it because we expect that it's going to be true every year. And then I'm like, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I'm telling my kids in five years, we're going to say it as well. So like how are you approaching that sentence this year? What's interesting is you know when someone asks you a question in your mind, you think where they're going to go. And I thought you were going to say I've trouble with Shpoch Amalcha. Oh, and you can go there next year. Now the reason that, so I think that Shpoch Amalcha is when you open the door and you say, may you pour out your wrath on me. And what I think of is, and I used to tell, I mean, I've written about this, is first of all, you're asking God to pour out God's wrath on the nations that have done terrible things to Israel. We're not saying we're going to do it. And second, I always thought of it as a tribute to generations that had suffered terribly and there I was in Philadelphia living a good life. And I wanted to pay honor to their emotions of anger and vengeance as well as their emotions of pain. But your question is actually a tougher one. Okay. Which is a violent day. Exactly. Which is, do you anticipate that this will never go away? And it's almost like when the Torah says that the poor will always be with us. Which is also a painful fault. Really, we can never overcome this. And so I suppose the way I think of it is that there might come a day when that's a historical relic. I think so. I hope so. I hope so. I'm sort of hopeful by disposition. In the way Rabbi Saks talked about it. I'm not optimistic, but I'm hopeful. And the distinction, as you well know, that hope is something that you can actively try to bring about optimism is just everything's going to be fine. I have a little bit of the optimism gene too. I must admit. But in the meantime, I think that it's actually, especially given what we've just seen. It's actually important as a spur to vigilance because when I grew up, I really thought that I was living in a world in which anti-Semitism was gradually disappearing. And I was obviously ridiculously naive. And I think the Seder was trying to tell me so. Yeah. How do we make sure we don't go the other way, which is Sianta's Sematism everywhere and really become almost like, you know, like self-fulfilling prophecy. And not be able to strategically then take it on. It's, right, which is a real danger. And it's hard because you and I both know that when you go negative, people pay attention. Right? So some media is complicated. Not only that, but if you want to give a drosh on a Shabbos morning and you want to make sure that people are paying attention to you, you don't talk about Shabbos. You talk about anti-Semitism. I have to learn more. I always go with anti-Semitism whenever. And so it's enormously important that we don't see anti-Semitism where it doesn't exist. Because then we have no credibility to call it out where it does. And also there's enough genuine anti-Semitism. We don't have to invent it. I think that we have to be sometimes more careful than we have been.
This is why also I tell people I will not entertain any analogies to a World War II or Nazis or Hitler because only the Nazis were Nazis. And as soon as you start comparing other people to the worst catastrophe in human history, you've trivialized your argument. And people just have to learn a little bit more history. There's a lot of other people in Jewish history sadly that you can compare today's anti-Semites too. So, again, there's so many questions that we're going to have this year that people are going to read some parts of the agada that will resonate differently this year than other years. Another part that I've been wondering about is when we read the 10 plagues, right, which are the 10 plagues that God needed out. My saying it. Yes. Meaded out. Meaded out upon the Egyptians, we take wine and we drop a little bit as a form of actually representing our morning and to say, I'm going to say to my own modern words, there were a lot of innocent Egyptians who were caught in this. What can we learn from that today as, you know, work continues in Gaza? We're also recording this in the wake of some strong protests by people of Gaza against Hamas who have just just bring to home the tragedy of so many individuals who are like caught in this hell. Right. So, what's the way that we can take this on this? I think it is entirely appropriate to express compassion for the innocent suffering in Gaza, just like you would express compassion for the innocent suffering in Sudan. I don't understand the idea that that is anti-Semitic or that's bad or that's wrong. Even if you think you don't want to, even if you don't want to express compassion for adults who are caught in the crossfire, although I would, for many, what about the children? The children are children and it's almost equivalent to the 10th plague, which is this is what happened for Israel to be free, but do you not have compassion for the children who were killed? And so, I think that that's an appropriate thing to incorporate in a Seder, but I also would say to people it's appropriate to incorporate other suffering of other peoples around the world. And that's part of the problem that Israel suffers from in terms of a double standard is it is the only conflict where people feel there are moral stakes over and over and over and over again. And I don't think that we as Jews should make that mistake. Right, although we could say that for us as just to focus on what's happening in Israel and Gaza, that might make sense. It makes sense, but I still think if you're going to express compassion for innocent suffering, that you can show that you have wider compassion than Israel and Gaza alone. And I'm actually afraid that we are developing compassion fatigue from a different perspective, which is that, and I can't believe I'm saying this, we're going into Passover knowing that it's the second Passover we're celebrating where there's still over two dozen living hostages in Gaza, plus many others that have been murdered. And I kept thinking this whole year by Passover, they'll be out. And we'll be able to really celebrate Passover fully knowing that they are out. And unfortunately, everything that we're seeing suggests that it's not going to be the case. But we do really keep this top of mind and top of heart. So the point of Passover is in every generation you should remember that you could have gone forth from Egypt. In other words, empathy. Like what was it really like to go out of Egypt? What is it like to wander across a desert? I mean, we see that the Israelites were bell again and again, but it's also a miserable and difficult life. And if we don't have some kind of empathy, knowing that we can't possibly imagine what it is, any more than we can imagine what it is to be one of the families whose hostages or relatives were killed on October 7th or after, you have to try to have that historical and also that contemporary empathy and really take a moment, maybe a moment of silence at each stator to just remember that there are people in this living hell day after day. And now I won't say year after year, but certainly after a year. And recall that the whole purpose of having a state of Israel was that there should be a place, our homeland, where Jews were safe and that that was, you know, it was a crashing of the Zionist dream on that day. And especially on the holiday that is the birth in some ways of the Zionist dream, which is Pesach, we have to remember them. And whatever way we can and offer up whatever prayers we can and hope somehow that we'll find a way to unravel this knot and bring them home. Yeah. And I would just encourage everybody, like you're saying, to make sure that we go into this other prepare to remember and to think about this. One of the things that we are going to do is like leave a chair for a hostage. I'm finding ways to speak to my children who are young about this as part of the southern table. And I think that we can almost in the same way that the rabbi's back then constructed the Haggadah, the Haggadah, for all of us to have a script that would inspire more stories, that we need to add to it in every generation the new stories that we have. And we did that for a while for Soviet Jews. People used to have an extra chair for the Soviet Jews when I was growing up. And so and we kept them in mind until they were free. You spoke before about being a man, not only a faith that also of hope. If you were sharing a hopeful idea that you hope people take with them into Passover under southern table, what would that be? So I think that the idea that we're celebrating a satire thousands of years later, there is nothing more hopeful than the very existence of the satire. And the fact that people are still finding new and deeper meanings in the satire year after year and new Haggadah are still being published year after year. And we were at a trip at one point where we saw the Arch of Titus and they were carrying the menorah from the temple. And I thought if you had said to anybody at that time, you know, in a couple thousand years, long after Rome is forgotten, long after Latin isn't spoken anymore, some Jews who speak Hebrew are going to walk by the Arch of Titus and look at it and remember that that was their menorah. Nobody would have believed you. It would have been a pipe dream. Yes, it's a joke. It's just like, I don't remember who first said this, but when you walk in downtown city, you'll never meet a hit tight. And the fact that you meet a Jew who is a relic of antiquity, but also more than a relic, a living, breathing example of an ancient people. If that's not miraculous and that doesn't give you some spark that there's a Kodashbah who I can't imagine what would because by all rights, we shouldn't be here. I tell people all the time when people say that Jews are here because they were persecuted, I explain that most persecuted people have done what you're supposed to do if you're persecuted, which is disappear. The only reason that people know we were persecuted is because we actually are still here. And so living in an age where there is an Israel, for all the problems that Israel has, is a privilege that thousands of years of Jews would actually, and did dream of. So we're living the dream. Beautiful. So a toss up which is the greater miracle that God took us out of Egypt or that we keep telling the story today. We always finish our episode by just asking like, "New what?" Some of the things that we took from our conversation, there's so much that I'm thinking, I'm thinking a lot about Jewish solidarity as an underpinning for the Jewish story. And I'm thinking also, rabbi, about your charge to not have limits to empathy, but to really be able to take that out. And I also just, the last word you just share about the, as being actually like a symbol of hope is really very powerful. And I want to say that I learned the meaning, the personal meaning of Pesach from Anandu, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote that his aunt Mary Moody Emerson was very influential in his life. And once he told her he was in a hurry and she said, "Hurry is for slaves." And I thought, "That's why the Mata is the symbol of Pesach." Why Mata of all the symbols that you could have chosen because to be able to have time, that is to be free. And we in an age where our time is controlled by technology and demands and so on, to be able to take the time to have a say to that in and of itself as an expression of freedom, which we should be very grateful. And which we can all just do to take on. Wondering Jews with Mjallan Nam is a production of Anpak and open door media brand, subscribe wherever you're listening to a spot, follow Anpak and all the regular social media channels, just search for @Anpakmedia. And if you enjoyed Wondering with us, please share this video.
and other episodes with your friends, family, whoever you think will enjoy. Thank you so, so much, Ray Welp, for joining us for this conversation. This episode was hosted by me, Nihal. Robbira is their audio editor, and we are produced by Michael Weber and Fickie Stern.
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