The Paradox of Passover 2025 - with Rachel Goldberg Polin

we have actually an obligation this year to really beat ourselves up at the satire because the whole point of Passover, it is supposed to be a commemoration of leaving the worst form of bondage and slavery that we ever experienced. And how can we do that this year when we know there are 59 people who are still there, 24 of whom are alive. Alive and in the worst, most horrific bondage that we can picture. There's one question and one question only and the question is why are they still there? It's 9.30 a.m. on Sunday, April 6th here in New York City. It is 4.30 p.m. on Sunday, April 6th in Israel, as 59 hostages remain captive in Gaza and as Jews all around the world from Sydney to Jerusalem to Paris, London, New York, Vancouver and beyond are preparing to celebrate Passover, the holiday of freedom. To say that this Passover is a paradox is an understatement. I do wonder if the hostages who are being starved and tortured in the tunnels of Gaza even know it is Passover. Jews began celebrating Pesach during the actual Exodus from Egypt sometime in the range of the 13th to 15th century BCE and the tradition has continued evolving but unbroken ever since. To honor this tradition, we will be doing something different on this comic back episode. We will be talking about Passover and about what this tradition can teach us about this paradoxical moment. With us today is Rachel Goldberg who really needs no introduction to our audience but there is another part of Rachel's life that most of you probably don't know. For most of her career, Rachel was a professional Jewish educator and I was hoping to speak with her as I sat down to prepare for our family saters. Before our conversation with Rachel, two quick housekeeping notes. First, we have heard from a number of you that the state of world jewelry address that I'll be delivering on Tuesday, May 13th at the 92nd Street Y was sold out and you were looking for ways to get tickets. A number of you reached out trying to get tickets and the team at the 92nd Street Y asked us to update on this podcast that the event has been moved now into a larger venue at the 92nd Street Y. So it is now possible to register again if you haven't already. So if you haven't registered, we'll post a link in the show notes. And second housekeeping note, just a quick thank you to our friend and regular on this podcast, Mati Friedman who lent Rachel Goldberg his podcast recording gear in Jerusalem today. It was an important last minute logistical hurdle he cleared for us. So thank you, Mati. Now onto Rachel Goldberg on the paradox of Passover 2025. This is call me back. And I am pleased to welcome back to this podcast. My, oh geez, what do I do here, Rachel? My long time friend who's been with you through thick and thin since we were in third grade together. So Rachel is mocking me here because as many of you may recall, I used to but no longer do. I used to try to characterize the friendship I had with many of my guests and Rachel gave me tourists offline because she said I was diluting the nature of these so-called friendships because she says you have lots of guests on. And if everyone is a long time friend, none of them are long time friends and she kept banging me with that. All right. So now I don't do that. That said, regularly, that said, Rachel, I consider a friend. We will leave it there. Oh my gosh, just a friend. Okay, sorry. All right. Dear friend, thought partner, I'll leave it there. But one very practical thing I wanted to tell you before we get into the meat of our conversation is you made me very self-conscious over Shabbat in a very healthy way or at least in a way that my family appreciated. You don't even realize that you did this, but you and I spoke during the week about doing this podcast and then we spoke again on Friday and I told you I would send you some notes of my thoughts on how we should go with this conversation that you would get, I would send it to you over WhatsApp and you would get them when you came out of Shabbat because you and I spoke last before now, right before you were heading to Shul on Friday. And I said, you'll get them when you come out of Shabbat and you said, okay, but don't send them on Shabbat. And I said, oh, don't worry, I won't, like meaning I won't intrude on your Shabbat and you said, no, no, no, don't send them on your Shabbat. Right. And that instantly had two effects. One, out of respect for you not wanting to disrupt my Shabbat or impose on my Shabbat, I panicked late Friday afternoon telling a line that we had to get all our work done for this episode before our Shabbat, which we've never had that panicked like that at six o'clock on Friday. And two, it gave me a flashback to what we last recorded in episode, not the last time I saw you guys, but last time recorded an episode, which was a year ago. And this you may not remember, which is I was in Tel Aviv, you were somewhere in your high for something an hour and a half away from Tel Aviv and I was recording an episode with you at the end of Shabbat and you had made it clear that you did not want me driving to where you and John were to record the episode on Shabbat that I had to wait until after Shabbat to drive to you. And I'm sitting there doing the math thinking there's no way this is going to work because I have to fly, I was flying out that night back to New York. So if I went to wait till the end of Shabbat, then drive an hour and a half, then do the episode, there's no way I will make my flight and you had been insistent that you would not have me drive to you on Shabbat. So here we are again. And the lawn started texting me over Shabbat and I said, I'm going to be offline for Shabbat because Rachel is religiously coercive. Yes. And he said totally, I said totally because I didn't want you to not enjoy Shabbat because you were trying to do something for me. It wasn't trying to impose Shabbat on you and say, here's how you have to observe. But it was that, you know, if you're going to be with your family or doing something on your own, I don't want you breaking that in order to do something for me. But you probably had a very nice Shabbat because of that. That's just that what I was going to tell you is we do observe Shabbat, not as strictly as you do, I think, or my sister does or my mother does, but we do observe Shabbat, but full disclosure here, I do violate it from time to time. I will glance at my phone to see if any messages have come through and it's something I'm working on. There is no judgment here, but I like that this is feeling a lot more like confession that I thought that this was going to be. And you're coming to me made me more alert, more aware about it. I will send you, by the way, there's this rabbi from TNEC New Jersey named Elliot Shryer in TNEC, Orthodox rabbi. And he did a podcast. I am not exaggerating here when I say this. He did a podcast episode called He Did He Is a Podcast This Rabbi. Listening to Call Me Back on Mutsay Shabbat. So the whole topic was, is it okay to listen to the podcast? Because from time to time, as you know, we do emergency episodes. If there's big news in Israel and we've made the decision while we generally don't record episodes on Shabbat, we will, if there's an emergency out of news. And he held a discussion on whether or not his congregants or those who listen to him, should they feel okay about listening to an episode that they know is recorded on Shabbat, even if they're listening to an after Shabbat. So, you know, there's a lot, I'll post that podcast on the show notes too. We're going to talk about Paisach and the Seder and I am going to pull back here a lot and be more student and let you be teacher. You have been a teacher for much of your career. If we can pull this off, I really would like that to be the dynamic here. So I'm going to just ask you a few questions and we'll kind of see where they go to get you into Teach Mode. So the most basic one, we have a lot of listeners who are deeply engaged with Paisach and I think we also have a lot of Jewish listeners who are passively engaged intellectually with Paisach and then we have non-Jewish listeners who are probably curious about Paisach but have no idea what it's really all about. So can you just talk about let's start with the Haggadah. What is the Haggadah, which is the key book text of the guides us through the Seder? What is it? What makes it unique relative to what we use in other Jewish holidays? And when was it written? Well, I'd even back up a little bit because most people don't like to be lost. I hate being lost whether it's on the street in the woods, in history. So I think even before talking about what is the Haggadah, to just talk about where do we get this idea that we have this holiday of Passover and where do we get this idea that we have this event on the first night and first two nights outside of Israel, this event called a Seder. And so just for like a very quick crash course, the Bible starts, you have Adam and Eve and the unfortunate apple incident, you have Noah, the flood, the rainbow, you have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the forefathers. Jacob has 12 sons. One of them is Joseph, the one with the pretty coat. He ends up being sold into slavery by his brothers and he ends up in Egypt, which sounds terrible, but they all actually end up in Egypt due to famine that was in the land of Canaan. And then things happen and regime change happens. And the Hebrew people, what we were called back then before being called the Jewish people, end up in slavery for its debated, it's somewhere between 402, 100 years, whatever it is, it's horrible because it's slavery. And then Moses arrives, there's the burning bush. And God says, I'm hearing the people crying out, it's time to get them out of being in bondage, being enslaved, go get them. And that is the beginning of the book of Exodus. We had the book of Genesis, then we have the beginning of the book of Exodus. And we start with this story of the Exodus of the people who become the Jewish people, leaving Egypt. And at the end of the Exodus story, we have this commandment. It's in chapter 13 of the book of Exodus. And we have different commandments, different myths vote that we can do at various times of the year or at various times of the day, right? There's certain myths vote that you could do every day. You could do honoring your parents every day. You could do giving charity, giving to ducca every day. We have keeping the Sabbath that you do once a week. Then we have some commandments that we have once a year, a once a year opportunity. And the once a year opportunity on the night, the same night that we were taken out of the land of Egypt, which on the Jewish calendar is the 15th of Nissan. We have a commandment on that night in chapter 13 verse 8. And it says, that is the night that you tell your children. It is because of what God did for me, setting me free from my bondage and my slavery and my pain. That is why we are commemorating tonight. Is that night the 15th of Nissan? Since we left Egypt, that the Jewish people have had a commemoration every year on that night. And initially, how we did that when we were in the land of Israel, when we first came into the land of Israel, when we had a temple. So we're talking about, you know, 2000 years ago, we used to bring offerings on the night of the 15th of Nissan. Now we no longer have the temple. The only part of the temple that is intact is the outer outer western wall, which we call the western wall. Or sometimes we call it the wailing wall because people go there to pray and get very emotional. And there's a lot of crying that's done at the western wall. And in place of these offerings that we used to bring, the rabbis of the Mishniyik Times instituted that we would have an evening where we would come together and we would have an order of things that we would discuss. And we would have certain foods that we would use that were symbolic. And that would be called a satyr because the word satyr means order. And the book, the how-to, how do you do a satyr book is called the Haggadah, which the show rash, the root of the word Haggadah is the Haggid to tell. So that book is the how we tell our story book. And that is how we've started this process of having these, we call them dinners, but really only one part of the satyr is the meal. Which is very frustrating to many Jews because they have no idea what they're getting into. They think, oh, I'm going to dinner. And then, you know, you're sitting there for two hours before anything even happens. No, you get a little bit of parsley. Right. Have a little snack before you go. But what's intriguing to me about the Haggadah is that there are parts that people are familiar with. The four questions are something that people seem to learn even if they're not very knowledgeable. I didn't grow up in a religious home. So for me, we would go to my grandparents. We would say the four questions. My grandma always had pink lemonade. My grandpa would hide for each of the grandchildren. He would hide a piece of Mata as the aficoman, which is part of the satyr. And that was it. That was our satyr. We were very bare bones. But what I like is that the four questions are really sample questions. It's the whole point of the satyr. Is it supposed to be this dynamic interactive question and answer, not frontal teaching, not lecture, not what I'm doing now? This is like I'm fired. Like this would be terrible. Like you don't just have somebody talking, talking. It's it should be this interactive. And discussion debate. Absolutely. And so everybody has a voice. So there are sample questions. And then there are sample personality types that you address. So there's we call them the four sons because the Huggadah was written at a time where there was not asking about, you know, the four daughters. But it's really four people. It's four personality types. It's saying they're people even today as any educator or as any friend when you're getting, you know, we all have friends who are more inquisitive, who are more curious. We have friends who are the devil's advocate. We have the friends who are more reserved and give space for you to talk. And then there's friends who really we like them. But sometimes we have to say to them, how do you feel? What is happening? What is your thought process? And all of those characteristics come up in the Huggadah. On the four questions, the tradition is, I don't know if it's more than just if it's anything beyond just the tradition or it's actually required. But the tradition is that the youngest person at the satire table leads the four questions. And growing up, and I know that's the same today with my kids when they were growing up. And I just see this everywhere. There's this pressure on the youngest child. It's like, and the kids who are older than the youngest child are like, they think they like lucked out because they're not the youngest one. There's all this tension around the youngest child having to quote unquote perform and sing what is ultimately now singing, Manish Tanayala. Is that lead the four questions? So I don't know where that tradition comes from. But I do think this is the point that like everyone has a role. Everyone has to be engaged. In fact, even the youngest person that's six or seven or eight year old at the table has a role and has to be in it so much so that these four questions that you're setting right now, they have to take the lead on. Correct. And it's also, I mean, the whole point is that we're trying to do unusual things to peak the curiosity and interest of those children. Because if we have the obligation to tell our children on that night what happened to us, then the children have to be involved, engaged, curious, and wanting to know. Otherwise, we haven't fulfilled our obligation. Now, the truth is your obligation can be filled by saying in one sentence, this is the night that God saved us. We were in pain and God saved us. And you've now outside of your obligation, you've done it. But we generally try very hard to say, well, here are the things that seem unusual. And I would actually say all the more so this year, last year was horrific. This year, I think is more horrific for obvious reasons and not obvious reasons. But I would say every single person who is going to a satire this year should have on the satire plate, either whatever is going to really peak the interest of every single person at your satire. Even if the youngest person at your satire is 45, it should be the masking tape with the number. Should be stuck on the satire plate, a lemon that's yellow, bitter, sour, hard to eat, hard to swallow should be on your satire plate, an unopened yellow flower that should be in water, but isn't in water. And it's just sort of becoming limp and lifeless on your satire plate. I think that there's so much opportunity and that we have actually an obligation this year to really beat ourselves up at the satire. I really truly believe that. And I'm feeling a lot of tension and trepidation going into this holiday because the whole point of Passover, it is supposed to be a commemoration of leaving the worst form of bondage and slavery that we ever experienced. And how can we do that this year when we know there are 59 people who are still there, 24 of whom are alive, alive and in the worst, most horrific bondage that we can picture. How do we have this commemoration when these boys, these men are there? If you're saying integrate this moment in the satire moment, I think it absolutely has to be integrated. I actually would even go so far as, I don't even know that we need four questions. I think this year there's one question and one question only and the question is, why are they still there? I want to come back to you just because I just think it's important for our listeners and viewers to just understand how you come at all of this, which includes something that I did not know what you just said a moment ago, which is that you did not grow up religious. No. So I know you as someone who is very Jewishly literate and you've been a professional Jewish educator. So how did you become that? What happened? Given that you weren't raised with that. I took the wrong turn. Funny thing happened on the way to the theater. I grew up in a very Jewish and Zionistic household in that our Judaism was our identity was defined by feeling connected to Israel. But we were not an observant family and then accidentally, So, incidentally, I ended up going to an Orthodox Jewish high school for a lot of different reasons that didn't have to do with religious reasons. My parents just were very worried about what was happening in the schools that they had thought I was going to go to. I grew up in downtown Chicago and I ended up in this wonderful Jewish Orthodox high school, but in order to prepare me for that experience, for eighth grade, they sent me to an Orthodox day school in Skokie. That was my entrance to this incredible universe of observant Judaism. In order to help me catch up, they had tutors who helped me rabbis who normally wouldn't have the patience for the questions I was very much asking, digging, constantly wanted to know more. I just fell in love with that community and that world. So I started to take on different Jewish observances way before my parents did. And so I ended up in Israel for a year after high school before going to Brandeis. So, you're gap year. My gap year and I learned more and I've always been hungry to catch up. Did you study at a Shiva? So no, that year I was in a program where I was at Hebrew U for a semester and then I was at an Orthodox Kieblitz actually in the Gaza envelope for six months. Then I went to, and I mean I was learning during that time, but I wasn't in a Yashiva setting. But my high school really was an Orthodox high school experience where half the day was secular studies and half the day was Jewish studies. And I was in the lowest level classes initially because I had so much of a gap, a deficit from not having that earlier. But I really felt it was this really beautiful way of life that I desperately wanted. And I really feel blessed that I've been on this journey and on this ride of gaining more and more knowledge. I think we're all like that. And in different subjects or topics that speak to us, but for me Judaism and religious Judaism, whatever that means, you know, ancient texts and really grappling with those texts have been something that have really brought a lot of meaning and value to my life. And after Brandeis, I ended up coming. I was in New York for a year and I studied at a seminary in New York called Dresha part time while I was also in graduate school. And then I ended up coming to Israel for what I thought was a six week program at the Pardase Institute, which is for post university Jewish learning. And I ended up staying there for five years. And it was during that time that I remat John because he was also from Chicago and he had also been at that Orthodox day school for high school. And I remembered him right away because John Poland was very good basketball player in high school. So what I ran into him on the street in Jerusalem, the first thing I thought is, oh, look, it's that guy. I know him and he's a good basketball player. And John was blessed to have grown up in an observant Jewish family. And so I thought he was the cat's meow. Okay. So the hug at the contains a line that let me say a couple things. It contains a lot of lines. So it contains a lot of lines. One, there's a word that we constantly say throughout the satire, which is a core memory. We see that word, I think during pace, during the satire, probably more than we at any other time in the Hebrew calendar and in any holiday. So why memory is a core is a core is a core like why is this everywhere in the satire? You know, we have a funny relationship with remembering we Jews. I'd even say all people because remembering can be very grounding or it can be very drowning. We have to be very careful with what we do with how we remember things. It is self-defining. Who are you? Don't forget where you come from. Don't forget what you're made of. Don't forget what you believe in. Don't forget what your values are. And on the other hand, if you're only looking back to define yourself because time, unfortunately, flows forward and our trajectory is forward. If we're not looking forward and allowing ourselves to also be who we're going to be, not just be who we've been, then we end up hitting the present or the future with the back of our head and we're not ready. So I think that there's that tension in the Haggadda of remember where you came from. You were slaves. You were no one. You were the lowest of the low and actually there's a debate in the Haggadda of where do you begin telling the story in the section called Maggi which is the storytelling part. Where do you start the story? And there's a debate between two rabbis who right who to thunk at there'd be a debate between two rabbis. One says you start it with the story of the slavery in Egypt and the other says no, you have to start it way, way, way back before when Abraham's father owned an idle store. He owned idles are us. We were idolaters and there's the question of why would we start it there and it's the stereotypical Hollywood answer of you know, you want to start the backstory. You got to start it way back, right? Like at the Godfather, like he starts way back and because then the excitement of where we end up is so much more dramatic. You know, we start the story talking about that we actually used to be idolaters. Like we didn't even understand that there was some one God running the show. We have to remember that we come from a place where we didn't always understand that there was godliness, that there was a rhyme to this reason. And then the story takes off from there and there are so many different parts also. You know, there's one of everybody's favorite songs is Dianu. Explain. Dianu means it would have been enough for us. I think it's 14 verses of explaining what steps were taken in order to be redeemed. And along the way we keep saying, if God had only done this, it would have been enough. If God had only done it. Now the truth is, I don't know that we mean that. We don't mean if you had just brought us to the tip of the Red Sea, but you hadn't opened it up, it would have been enough. I actually think that would have been a big bummer. But what we're trying to say, I think the whole point of the Haggata is actually it's this gratitude training workshop. And sometimes in life we have to be able to stop even when we haven't won the whole lottery. And we have to be able to say, I am blessed. I am blessed right here. And that I think is the message of Dianu is we have to be able to stop and acknowledge that maybe we don't have it all, but what we have is a blessing. There is a line in the Haggata that feels especially haunting today, which is, and I quote, in every generation they rise up against us to destroy us. That feels like when you look at the sweep of Jewish history, it's obviously easy to internalize that narrative. But at least before October 7th, we all looked at that and said, more or less, I mean there are incidents obviously before October 7th in the last couple decades, but it didn't feel like quote unquote, they were rising up against us. And this feels like more than just a narrative that we internalize and recite. You could say it was a prophetic warning. You could say it's a self-fulfilling narrative or self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, how do you think about that line? It's interesting because I think there's so many lines that we were constantly as parents or educators or peers trying to imagine and create meaning and mash meaning into it. And now, given what's happened since October 7th, there's no room for imagination. In fact, I'd like a lobotomy. I literally, you know, I'm in therapy now because since Hersh was killed, it's like now there's actually time because during the 330 days that he was stolen, there was no time to do any sort of self-care. So now there's still no time, but we're doing some self-care. And I said to my therapist, "Can you give me amnesia?" He said, "Everybody wants it." Everyone who's been through trauma wants amnesia. And that's what's so painful about this line is we would have to kind of convince people at the satire five years ago, ten years ago. We tried to make it into metaphors. You know, it's not that people are coming after us. It's like, is it advice? Is it the internet? Is it social media? Trust me, we can get out. It's so funny you're saying this because, I mean, in retrospect, it seems so pathetic. I hadn't thought of it until you just said that. But number of my satire is before October 7th, we've got our kids to talk about pressures they feel. Right. What enslave you? Right. What is making you not be your true self? Okay. So, you know, unfortunately, this is so in your face, so bombastic. And it's very complicated to sort of reign it in. I mean, on its most basic surface level, it certainly seems that some sort of force really did their job of rising up against us on October 7th. I would say is that if someone decides to take that at its face value, then I actually think our answer is, that's their job. Our job is to save ourselves. There's another line in the Huggadayee want to ask you about, and I'll quote here, "If the Holy One bless be He, hadn't brought our fathers out of Egypt, then we and our children would still be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt." So there's a lot going on there, but it does feel to some degree like it's asking us to have a practical here and now attitude to how we see the enslavement. And you said something in a podcast, in the 1840 podcast, you said, "You have to pray like it all depends on God, and you have to work like it all depends on you." What did you mean by that? Well, I learned that from Johnny Moore, Reverend Johnny Moore. I think that that is the prototypical, you know, the Jewish joke of, there was a man and he's waiting on the roof of his house because there's a huge flood. He's shouting out to God, saying, "Save me, save me," and someone comes by with a robot and says, "Get in." And he says, "No, no, I'm waiting for God." And then, you know, a helicopter comes with a ladder and says, "Climb up the ladder." And he says, "No, no, I'm waiting for God." And then the floodwaters come and they cover him and he dies. And he goes up to heaven and he says to God, "What the heck, I was shouting out you and praying." And God said, "I send you a boat." I said, "You're a helicopter. What do you want from me?" You know? And that is, so when Johnny Moore said that to me, that is what came to mind is that we have to do both. I, as someone who believes in God, has to do both. I think it would be very unfair to say to someone who doesn't believe in the idea of God. You have to pray to God and you have to work hard. That would be religiously coercive, which would be like telling someone not to do something on Shabbat if they wanted to do something on Shabbat like drive to you if you were in the North last year. But I really do feel that. I feel that, you know, every morning when I'm praying and I'm praying and I'm crying and I'm praying. I didn't know. I thought at a certain point I'd run on our tears and it's unbelievable. And even I went to the dermatologist last week. I said, "What is this?" He said, "You have got to stop crying." Like you just do. It's like you're like destroying your body. But I can't help it. I can't help it because these my children are there. Your children are there. My husband is there. Your spouse is there. You know, our parents are there. I can't. I can't stop crying and I can't stop working because I think that we have to do both. And so I think that that's what that line is really talking about. We have to be shouting up and shouting forward and not stopping. You talked earlier about the four sons. Can you just quickly tick through the four sons? And by the way, just for our listeners, these are the four sons that are described as coming to the satire in the Huggada. They're described in the represent four different categories. You know, there's one that's the wise one, the one that wants to engage and really learn and is curious. They call this second one the wicked one. I actually think he's just the devil's advocate or the one who actually is very smart, but may feel a little disenfranchised. We all have that boy in our class or that girl in our class, who was just a little bit too smart. And then there's the simple one who might ask like a very, very basic question. And then there's the one that's just not asking. And it might be that they, that we say they don't know how to ask. It might be with their shy. They know how to ask. They're not comfortable. They may be at a table with people they've never met before. And they're just not comfortable. And again, these don't have to be children. They're just personality types. They're different types of people and different types of learners. So the one who does not know how to ask is the one I've been thinking about because there are a lot of young Jews today around the world, especially in diaspora, who are really uncertain of how to engage with their Judaism and their Jewish identity because it hasn't been the catastrophe that you and the Israelis people have suffered for Jews in the diaspora. But let's just say it's been highly unnerving. If you're a Jew living around the world, I interact with a lot of young Jews. I know you interact with a lot of young Jews. I think a lot of those Jews don't know how to ask. They don't know if Judaism is worth the burden is worth the hassle. So I'm putting all of them in that category in the one who doesn't know how to ask because I think people do look to you because you have provided a lot of wisdom, not just but Jewish wisdom in the face of trauma and human catastrophe that you are personally experiencing. And that not only have you hung on to your Judaism, it's part of what's navigating you to some degree. I think I don't want to put words in your mouth. I'm just actually asking. So what do you say to the Jew who doesn't know how to ask? Well, first of all, I think I would say I get it. I think sometimes when there is huge tragedy, huge inexplicable pain and suffering, sometimes there's just silence. And we even see that actually there's a precedent for that errand who was Moses's brother in the Bible, his older brother, something happens and both of his sons are killed in one second. He had two sons and they're gone and his response is silence. And the commentators say sometimes that's the response. Sometimes it's so bad and it's so perplexing and it's so confounding that the only answer is silence. And so I don't blame, yes, we're talking about young people, but I mean, anyone, I don't blame anyone saying, I have no idea what is going on. I don't know how to engage and I don't think I want to engage. I even understand that because the dissonance is so thick, I wake up time and time during the day, I am awake, but I reawaken and I think what is happening? It feels unreal what we're going through. And so I would just, first of all, I would really validate people who feel like they don't even know what to do. I would say I get it. I also don't know what to do. And then I really do think that there's room to just try to walk in where there are other people who also don't know what to do because there's something about being together that can be very affirming. And again, it could be silent. I have noticed this when I get together with these hostage mothers at what is called here, Mishmerat Mayah, the Hado, which is the shift 101, which is a gathering. It started out as women wearing white being silent, coming together and just sitting in the street. And now it's thousands of people, men and women, you don't have to wear white, who come together and just sit because there's been so much shouting and so much crying and so much screaming and so much pain and so much praying and so much rhetoric and so much debate. And finally, mothers said, we are just coming together to sit for our children. And wives came for their children and their spouses. And we talk a lot, obviously, the huge, most urgent critical issue of these 59 people. We know that 24 of them are alive, but we know 35 of them need to come home for proper burial. And when you sit silently, there is power in that silence. And I will also say that is prayer. That is absolutely prayer. And so many people say, I'm not religious. I do this and this and this. I'm not religious. First of all, there's no judgment. None of us are religious and all of us are religious. Their labels, they mean nothing. Forget it. But it's such a holy, beautiful, sacred moment when people come together in pain silent. So I'd encourage people to try to do that. And just to go back for one moment to talk about the 35 people that have been confirmed dead who are still being held, who are mothers and sisters and daughters and spouses and sons and brothers and grandpas and grandmas, you know, actually and four of them are US citizens, I should say, you know, Nithayahan and Umar Nutran, Gaden, Judy, when we were talking about Diana before, it will sound so hard to understand, I think, I feel Diana that I got to bury her. Because I have all of these friends now whose children are there, they don't have a place to go. John and I just visited Hersha's grave last week and we got back in the car and John said, it is so unbelievable and shitty that this is where we have to come to see him. But it's still comforting that we have a place and we are so lucky. And that is how upside down the world is right now. And that's why it's very difficult for me to be going into this holiday because we're actually lucky. When I speak to American officials, they're often struck who spend time with hostage families. I've heard this repeatedly, they're struck by American government officials, by the lengths some families want to go to get their loved ones back to Israel, even if they're dead. And we mentioned, I think, Rubikhan has said, he said to me, I think he said this publicly, so I'm comfortable quoting him, but he has said something to me along the lines of, I don't know what I'll do if I'm just told to learn to live with the fact that someday in a rebuilt Gaza, my son's body is buried underneath. some skyscraper. And so I've used that line when I've spoken to US officials in this administration about why yes it's traumatic and awful and every awful word you can come up with to talk about losing someone as a result of October 7th, but it still matters to get them home. Well I'll tell you two things on that point. The first thing is that in Judaism, according to our tradition, we feel very strongly that the body is the vessel that holds our nashama, that holds our soul. The soul is what is holy and sacred and beautiful and lives eternally, but it is encased in this body while we're in this world. And when the soul leaves the body, when the nashama leaves the body, it's almost like there are these holy vapors that are left in this casing, in this suitcase that's been holding this beautiful, god-kissed gift that we've had. And so we believe that the body has a holiness to it and has to be treated in a very sacred specific way. And the way that the body is prepared for burial, according to Jewish law, is very specific and it's very ritualized. And that's what the burial society does. And I actually, for seven years when we lived in Berkeley, California, I was part of the burial society and I used to prepare women who had died. I would prepare their bodies for their burial. And there's a way that you wash the body and that you dress the body in certain burial shrouds. So this is also, it's that we feel that it is the ultimate chesapeake. It's the ultimate act of loving kindness that you can do for someone is once their soul has left their body is that you give them a proper burial. This is a tenant of our belief system. So it's not just this idea of how I want my child's body back. This is ingrained in the DNA of who we are. That's number one. The other thing I will tell you and this is extremely, I think, complicated for people to hear is when we were burying her, right before we went to bury him, the men who had prepared her, she's body, I didn't know this happened. They came and they asked John if they could talk to him for a minute. So I was waiting in the car and John went with these people. And I didn't know what he did. And I only found out that night. He said they took him into the van where they had her. And they said, we want you to look at his face and identify him. Now they unwrapped his face because we have burial shrouds. So he was wrapped up and in Jerusalem in most of Israel, but in Jerusalem, you don't bury people in coffins. You bury them just wrapped in burial shrouds and the men are wearing wrapped in a tallite, a prayer shawl. So they unwrapped this little shawl and they unwrapped the shroud that was covering his face and they showed John hers his face. And I said to John, I'm so sorry you had to do that, but I'm so glad that you did because I don't think I'd believe it if you hadn't seen him. And he said Rachel, I saw him and I don't believe it. And so what I'm telling you is that it's incredibly important. People will never believe it because would you ever want to believe that your son was gone? So even these people who are told, your daughter, she died on October 7th, they have her body, your grandmother, your mother, your wife, she died on whatever date. And they have her body. Human vitality and resilience and optimism makes it so we don't want to believe that's true. And so that's another yet another reason why we need these people back. Aside from the fact that it's part of our religious tradition, it's also just a psychological way of saying you have your person. Here's where they now are. You can go and visit this place and I had a rabbi contact me who both his parents were Auschwitz survivors. And he told me he said, first of all, part of why this has been so horrific for you is that your son was a Holocaust survivor who was then killed, which was a very intriguing way of describing her. Someone else asked me recently, we were in America and someone said, oh, I heard you are the daughter of Holocaust survivors. How does it feel that your son went through this horrible experience? And I said, well, my mother was born in Detroit and my father was born in Gary, Indiana. So I'm actually not a Holocaust survivor child, but what I am is the parent of a Holocaust survivor. And that really is what I feel like. I feel that her survived the Holocaust. He did every single thing right. And then he was killed. And those beautiful five who were with him. Also, they did every single thing right. They were Holocaust survivors. And then they were killed. But I understand from this rabbi he was saying, until each of his parents died many, many years after the Holocaust, he said they never were able to move forward. They never had a place to go. Their parents had both been killed. All their siblings were killed. One of his parents had been married and had children before who were killed in the Holocaust before. These things are extremely important for how do we move forward? How do we move forward? Not just the 59 families. How do we as a people, as a nation, as a species move forward? When we know that this horrific thing happened, and we know that these people are being held as bargaining chips, people who are alive, and the people who were killed and taken in order to torment their families. I want to ask you about that because this is your second Passover without her. The last one he was alive, but he was taken hostage. And this Passover, he's dead. It's just the last year's Seder. And I guess I can ask the same question about here approaching this Seder. When you look at the words on the page, when you look at the Haggadah, it's one thing to read it. As you said, like, although it's just a normal ritual, it's another thing to read it when it feels like for you time stopped. You sit at the Seder table, is it like you're just going through the motions? Because you have to because you're an observant Jew. Or how you like, give me a break. How do I do this? How do we take? Because you take ideas seriously. You take religious ideas seriously. And this is a story of religious ideas and religious and Jewish history. And you're looking at it and you're like, what do I do with this? Well, last year, and this year, we will also be with them. Our closest dearest friends are Rabbi Rob and Kameekan. And Rob, Rabbi Rob, is a very wise, sensitive, compassionate person who, in the most elegant way, made last year's Seder exactly what it needed to be. And so it was extremely, delicately orchestrated. We did exactly what we had to do and not more. We all cried. There was not one person at the Seder who did not cry. The cotton family was there and our cousins, Elliot and Rebecca and their children were there. And all of us were sobbing. And we were all very aware that Hersh was in Egypt, in slavery, in bondage. And we were as well. And it was very real. And it was very beautiful. And it was excruciating. And that is what it was supposed to be. And I think the difference this year, obviously, that Hersh is now never going to be at a Seder with us again in this world. The fact that he's dead is obviously the hugeest difference. But last year, there were two things. First of all, we had hope that he was going to come home and that that was just going to be the only year that we were ever without Hersh's Seder. But the second thing is we were guessing about the torment he was enduring. And all of the sudden, what has become extremely difficult for me, especially in these last few weeks, is with the recently released hostages coming home and their testimony, we now know what they are going through. And it is horrific. It is not digestible. It is true insanity to listen to Ellie Cherabi describing what he went through, to listen to Orlevy, to listen to Ellie Akkoen, to listen to these young women who were released who were in the room next to Matan Angarest, to now know that is very different to now know that alone Ohel is by himself with Shrapnel in his eye. He can't see out of one of his eyes. It's in one of his hands. He was on his way to music school. He's a talented pianist to know that he's by himself to know that Matan Angarest now has an arm that's completely lame because it was so badly damaged in the torment that he's endured, that his face is no longer symmetrical, that he sounds cavitonic when he's speaking, that you have Eviatar David who you as a glasses wearer can appreciate. They took his glasses away. He's blind without his glasses. as he can't see anything. He and his best friend, Guy Gilbaud Dalal, Guy is deaf in one ear now. We know this. Those two boys are being held with bags on their head 24/7. They don't even eat without the bags on their head. They don't see what they're given to eat. All of them are in shackles, shackles, chains, all of them. How do we digest this going into this satire? And that's where I realize the torture that the parents are going through of the 24 hostages who we know are still alive. That torture, even I have never experienced, because we didn't know when Hirsch was being held, we didn't know. There were people in the intelligence world here and in America who did know they were privy to that. They didn't share that with the families. And we now know because hostages are coming home and Yarden Bibaz is describing what he went through and what he saw. And Tal Shoham is explaining to the parents of Eviatar and Guy what he saw when he was with them. He's Siegel saying that they made him watch them sexually torturing a female hostage. Yes, yes. So now that we know that makes it all the more impossible to wrap our minds around, how do we pretend that okay, it's Paisach, it's Passover. Let's all have a great satire. And I am so conflicted about it. And even coming to talk to you today about this, I was really trepidacious. And John said to me, no, go and talk to Dan and go and tell everyone you are to have a terrible, terrible satire. Make sure you cry at that satire every single one of you or you have not fulfilled your obligation as having seen yourself as having been in Egypt, like Eviatar and like Idhan and like Tamir and like David and like Arielle and like Alon and like Matan Zankauker. This year, we normally dip a hard boiled egg into salt water. One of the symbols that's on the satire plate is an egg for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's used to remind us of one of the sacrifices that was given that was roasted, but also an egg is a symbol of life. And it's, you know, circular life death symbol. And saltwater is of course reminding us of the tears that the Jewish people were crying when they were in this horrible bondage and affliction. And so we dip the egg into the saltwater. This year, I think we should pass the saltwater around and everybody should take a sip of the tears that we should all be tasting and crying. And also because Tal Shauham said that the water that they got every day that was only a half a cup of water, he said it was saltwater. In Gaza when they're being held hostage. When he was being held hostage, he was just released. Yeah. You know, during this phase, the deal that we had of the 33 that started in January, he said, the water tastes like saltwater. It's either that it's filled with iron, it's not clean or that it's actual saltwater. He said it was almost impossible to swallow it, but when it's all that you have, you force yourself. And I feel like we should all be forcing ourselves to have one sip of what these people are drinking daily while we are at our saters. They will be in a dank, dark, dungeon-esque tunnel having nothing except maybe their tears. Rachel, I want to close by talking about some of these hostages that have been freed that you have spent time with, which you've told me a little bit about, some of whom were with Hirsch. How did those encounters shape your own journey, learning from them about their time with Hirsch? How's that shaped your own understanding of the journey? You've been on. So we were very blessed that Orlevi, who was in the same bombshelter as Hirsch, and on the same pickup truck that Hirsch was on the UN pickup truck that he was kidnapped in, or was released with Ellie Sherabi and Oehad Ben-Ami. And he actually asked to meet us. We had heard, he was released on a Saturday and on day 491. And his brother, Mirhael, Michael, who we had gotten to know throughout this struggle because we went to Rome together and we were at various advocacy events with him. He actually called John right after Shabbat on that Saturday of day 491 and he said, "I just want to let you know that when I hugged Orle one of the very first things he asked me is how is Hirsch?" And he said, "He would like a few days and then he would like to meet you." And so on day 496, John and I went to the hospital where Orle was being kept. Obviously he was in really terrible shape. There was were the three men who came out looking truly like they had been released from a concentration camp or is about John's height, John's six feet tall and or weighed 50 kilo when we met him, which I think is about 110 pounds. It was so godly meeting him. It was meeting someone who really it felt like I was meeting someone who returned from the dead. He has a beautiful spirit. He turned to us. I assumed we were going to talk to him in Hebrew and God blessed him as we walked into this room. Just the three of us, he didn't want anyone else there. He turns to me and he says, "Would you like me to speak in English?" And I said in Hebrew, "Oh no, it's okay. We could speak in Hebrew. It's good for me to practice." And he says in gorgeous English, I really have good English. And John said, "Great, let's speak in English." And he told us about the kidnapping itself and being in the truck and all of these mysterious black holes that we didn't know about and that we were always guessing about. He was able to fill in a lot of information for us. So he explained to us that when they went in to, and I'm leaving a lot out, but I'm sharing some, when they pulled into Gaza and the truck was surrounded by thousands of gossips who were beating them with two by fours and throwing shoes at them and all sorts of things, that herch was covered completely in a blanket and taken off the truck, which led the others in the truck to believe that herch had bled out from his injury, from his arm and that he had died. And that's why they thought that they had taken herch. On day 52, herch ended up in the same tunnel as Orlevi, Elia Cohen, and Elisha Rabi. And Or and herch started to talk. They didn't recognize each other because there was so much pandemonium in chaos and there was no time in the bombshelter to say, "Oh, hi, my name's Rachel. I'm from Chicago. Where are you from?" You know, there was no chit chat. It was total pandemonium. 18 people were killed. Hershey's hand got blown off, which Orr was the one who told us. His hand got blown off while he was holding a grenade trying to throw it out. We had never known that. We knew his forearm had been blown off, but we didn't know how. He said, "When they realized who each other was, they jumped up and they hugged each other." Which also was really meaningful to me because when I hugged Orr, I realized Orr is the last living person who touched herch. And so when I touch Orr, and I've seen him again since then, I feel that remnants of my herch. And he told us how herch had said this line from Victor Frankel of, "When you have a why, you will figure out a how. When you have a why, you will figure out a how." And so for Orr, you know, he said, like, "You have a why. You have a sun. You have to figure out how you're getting out of here because you've got a lot to live for." And Ellie Sherabi subsequently told us that herch also said that line to him. And Ellie Akoan said, he said that line to me that he was constantly saying it. And what's so intriguing for me is when herch left that tunnel three days later, those men continued saying that line every single day. And they would talk about with each other, what's our why? What's going to get us through for the next 450 days. And he said, the last day I said it was Saturday morning when I woke up on day 491. And he said, when I'm strong enough, because this was day 496, he said, I'm getting a tattooed on my arm. And when I saw him last week, he saw me from across the room. And he said like this, and he goes like this. And he shows me and here in English, he has the sentence that herch was quoting from Victor Frankl. And he had it tattooed on his arm in English, which is like a wink to herch. So a lot has been filled in because I kept thinking maybe herch was broken. Like he had seen 18 people murdered in front of his eyes, including his beloved dear friend, honor Shapira in front of him blown up. He had his own arm blown on us. I thought maybe he broke. But what I found out from the these men who were with him. He wasn't broken. He was giving them encouragement with this line, but not just that, but Bore told us, Hersh was laughing. Hersh was joking. And a lot of other information and the other thing he told us which gave us great comfort is he said, "Ori, Denino was with Hersh from day one. Ori, Denino is the one who made sure that Hersh was okay because Hersh was not treated as we shot on the first day. Hersh was bleeding to death and on the third day when he was basically almost dead. Ori, Denino got him. He was screaming at the captors saying, "He's gonna die and he's worth so much more alive. He's American. You gotta get him treated." And he ended up getting treated in a hospital, a real surgery, and he was with Ori from day one until day three, 28 when he was killed with Ori next to him on his left. And Ori told us the whole time that they were together for those days in that tunnel when they overlapped in the same tunnel. He said, "He and Ori were like brothers." He said, "They worked together next each other the entire time. That gives me tremendous comfort." Because when Hersh was found on day three, 30, he was found on Edinuer Shalmi. They were face to face. And on his left was Ori, Denino. And in a world that's broken, that's comfort. - All right. Maybe I'll just ask you one last question 'cause I really don't know how to say goodbye to you right now. 'Cause normally every other person, every other Jewish speak to these days. I say, "The hug paysah, samaya, hug samaya, wishing people literally samaya, happy holiday." What are people saying to you these days and they'll lead up to paysah? What do you say? What should I say to you now? - I'll write it exactly. - Tell me how to talk to you right now. - How about we should all have a meaningful paysach. We should all have a paysach that each of the holidays has a nickname and paysach is called "chagha-chayrut," which means the holiday of freedom. There is still time, Dan. There is still time in khasidut, in the khasidic tradition. There's this saying that you wish people to have things keherath-ein in the blink of an eye. And we've seen it happen. We've seen in these last 548 days, things do happen in the blink of an eye. And this can change. We don't know what's gonna happen in these next few days. There can be a decision that you know what? We're getting these 59 people back and it will happen. When there is a will to make it happen, it will happen. So I pray for all of us a true holiday of freedom, a true holiday of meaning, and a true time of figuring out what is our why, what is our why, and then we will figure out the how. - Keherath-ein. - Keherath-ein. - Thank you, Rachel. - Thanks, Dan. (upbeat music) - That's our show for today. If you or your organization are interested in sponsoring, call me back, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach us at [email protected]. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with others. Who you think may appreciate it. Time it again, we've seen that our listeners are the ones driving the growth of the callmeback community. So thank you. To offer comments, suggestions, sign up for updates, or explore past episodes, visit our website, arcmedia.org. That's arkmedia.org, where you can also find transcripts with hyperlinked resources, which will hopefully help you deepen your own understanding of the topics we cover. Call me back. It's produced and edited by Lawn Benetar, additional editing by Martin Huergo. Arcmedia's executive editor is Yardena Schwartz, research by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Seenor. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]