Category: March 2018

So much to celebrate! By: Bev Goldman The dramatic but so-longed-for birth of the State of Israel in 1948 heralded renewed life and new hope for millions of people: the chalutzim who had begun building Israel, draining the swamps, and preparing the land for agriculture beginning in the late 19th century; the almost 900 000 Jewish refugees who were forced to flee the persecution they suffered at the hands of Arab leaders in Arab countries in which they had previously lived relatively peacefully for hundreds of years; survivors of the…

Some deeper insights into the many afflictions that Hashem visited upon the Egyptians By: Aron Ziegler The modern Pesach Haggadah is chiefly a text that guides us in the performance of our obligation to relate the story of our being redeemed from having been slaves in Egypt. The title ‘Haggadah’, ‘The telling over’, is drawn from the large ‘Magid’, ‘Narration’, section which, in turn, stems from the Torah verse, “And you shall narrate (v’higadeta) to your child on that day (Pesach eve) saying ‘for this reason did Hashem do (all…

But the shteiging continues By Chandrea Serebro Most diligent students worry when they leave their place of learning, whether it be a school, a university, a Beis Midrash, or a Yeshiva, for a holiday or a break that they will lose out. They worry that they will lose not only their flow in whatever it is they were engaged with, but even that they might lose some of the knowledge already gained – or at the very least the groove of their studies and the ease and comfort developed over…

Memories of Pesach with Uncle Baruch By: Rabbi Dr David Fox He was not really our uncle, but my parents had befriended them. He and his wife were survivors of Auschwitz and had lost everything during the war. They had also lost their only son. Part of a large group of survivors who made it to America after the war, they had been trained to raise chickens in order to have employment, and were then relocated across the country. One part of the group settled on the East Coast and…

Celebrating salvation…or servitude? By: Dovid Samuels One of the mitzvos that we are commanded to fulfil on the Seder night is to drink four cups of wine. Even the poorest among us, who rely on charity for their food, should be given enough to buy no less than four cups, for the mitzvah. Many reasons are given by our Sages[1] as to why we need specifically four cups. One reason, and perhaps the most well-known, is that there were four terms referring to our rescue from Egypt: hotzaysi (took me…