This Editor’s Note was sent out Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community.
For more than six months since Hamas’s invasion and slaughter, Israel has been trying to liberate the hostages that Gaza’s terrorist government dragged away to captivity.
As Israel and Jewish people everywhere sit down at the Passover Seder table this year, nobody will need reminding of the modern relevance of its story of exodus and liberation.
Nobody will need reminding of the Haggadah’s oft-stated obligation to retell that ancient rescue saga as though we ourselves were enslaved and ultimately freed.
To do so does not require imaginatively casting the mind back through millennia, but merely a scan of the news.
Well, perhaps that is what has helped sustain the Jewish people, uniquely, near-miraculously, throughout all those generations since ancient times.
** On Monday night, I interviewed Giora Eiland, a retired general and former head of the National Security Council.
I share his final understatement: “I hope that next year, on the eve of Passover, we’ll talk again, and the situation will be better.”
On Wednesday, the Times of Israel Community received an email with this Editor’s Note in addition to the weekly update from ToI. Join the ToI Community by clicking this link to receive these Editor’s Notes as they are released.
Since the invasion and slaughter by Hamas more than six months ago, Israel has been working to free the hostages that the terrorist organization in Gaza dragged into captivity.
Many were freed in November after a week-long truce, but 129 are still in Hamas’s custody and under appalling conditions after these unbearably long days, weeks, and months. In fact, a large number of them have passed away.
Nobody will need to be reminded of the story of Israel’s exodus and liberation’s contemporary relevance when they gather around the Passover Seder table this year. It won’t take much to remind people of the Haggadah’s often-stated duty to recount that historic rescue story, as if we were all enslaved and eventually set free.
To do this, one need only glance at the news rather than imaginatively transporting oneself back thousands of years.
When we say, “This year we are here; next year in the land of Israel,” our hearts will be with those we are missing. We will be free people next year; we are slaves this year. In actuality, those lines have rarely been delivered with more national fervor.
Furthermore, this year’s Passover will be observed by tens of thousands of Israelis who are either permanently exiled within their own country or are unable to return to their ancestral homes in the north.
And we have only just started to come to terms with the deaths of those who will never come back – those who were killed on October 7 and those who have perished in the conflict that has raged ever since. We cannot turn a blind eye to the lives lost by others entangled in the worsening conflict—those who did not participate in the unjustified invasion of our restored Jewish homeland.
Israel’s current population has seldom, if ever, experienced the same level of bereavement, existential threat, and psychological terror as we do. For better or worse, we have never before needed the direct assistance of other countries to help thwart an enemy attack, as we experienced over the course of the overnight hours of Saturday and Sunday when an incredible coalition, led by the United States and comprising Saudi Arabia and Jordan, allowed us to escape almost unharmed from an unprecedented direct missile and drone attack by Iran’s Islamic extremist regime.
Israel as a nation does not, and clearly dares not, live in isolation. To maintain and expand these crucial alliances, it will require all of its wisdom.
It will require all of its knowledge as well to come out of this protracted dark hour. The unity, resilience, and wisdom of it. And certainly, astute, pragmatic, composed leadership.
Maybe the Jewish people have survived, almost miraculously, through all those generations since ancient times because of the intervention of a higher power. And maybe, as Deuteronomy 28:8 suggests so strongly, that higher power aids those who aid themselves.
***.
I conducted an interview with retired General Giora Eiland, the former head of the National Security Council, on Monday night. He presented some rather drastic solutions to the crisis; they weren’t cure-alls, but they were the best that he could think of.
His last, understated statement is one I will also share: “I hope that when we get together on Passover eve next year, things will be better. “.
