Dear Friends,
Passover, this year, is deeply conflicted. Yes, the last two years during this period of pandemic has made Passover observance difficult, if not virtual, and challenged us to seek new meanings from the already profound corpus which is Pesach.
This year, when a violent, ungrounded and vicious war is waging in lands once heavily populated by our own Jewish families, we hear again the ancient calls from the Seder, “Let all who are hungry come and eat.”
And, in the Torah portion for the First Day of Passover, we read of Pesach Mitzrayim – the actual exodus from Egypt and the night when the Angel of Death came to enact the final plague and set forth the redemption of the Jewish people.
It sounds harrowingly familiar. Images of first-born Egyptians laying in their beds are echoed by photographs of children and civilians having been killed and left behind by the Russian army.
Only, there is a significant and insightful difference. Jewish tradition teaches that there are essentially two kinds of war – milchemet chovah and milchemet r’shut – an obligatory war and a war of choice. The first is one that either is commanded by God or in self-defense. The latter is one of choice, commonly to commandeer land, water or other resources.
When God destroyed the Egyptian hosts in our story in Exodus, it was a milchemet chovah – an obligatory war. Evil had to be eradicated. Similarly, when America entered World War II, it was obligatory. We had been attacked, and the world was in danger of being overrun by the tyranny of Nazism and its genocidal forces.
Today, however, Putin’s war is not obligatory – except on those defending Ukraine and the democracies of Europe. Putin’s war was his choice; apparently, he wishes to enlarge his territory to include Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, and borders with NATO nations. He chose to attack civilians and to unleash his own Angel of Death on children and grandmothers in apartment buildings and maternity hospitals.
Our Passover Torah portion describes the Leil Shimurim – the Night of Watching – when the Israelites saw their redemption unfold at God’s proverbial hands.
Our prayer is that we will offer our resources, our donations, our support - that our hands today might be the extension of God’s outstretched hands, and that we can put an end to this long Night of Watching.
With Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
Passover, this year, is deeply conflicted. Yes, the last two years during this period of pandemic has made Passover observance difficult, if not virtual, and challenged us to seek new meanings from the already profound corpus which is Pesach.
This year, when a violent, ungrounded and vicious war is waging in lands once heavily populated by our own Jewish families, we hear again the ancient calls from the Seder, “Let all who are hungry come and eat.”
And, in the Torah portion for the First Day of Passover, we read of Pesach Mitzrayim – the actual exodus from Egypt and the night when the Angel of Death came to enact the final plague and set forth the redemption of the Jewish people.
It sounds harrowingly familiar. Images of first-born Egyptians laying in their beds are echoed by photographs of children and civilians having been killed and left behind by the Russian army.
Only, there is a significant and insightful difference. Jewish tradition teaches that there are essentially two kinds of war – milchemet chovah and milchemet r’shut – an obligatory war and a war of choice. The first is one that either is commanded by God or in self-defense. The latter is one of choice, commonly to commandeer land, water or other resources.
When God destroyed the Egyptian hosts in our story in Exodus, it was a milchemet chovah – an obligatory war. Evil had to be eradicated. Similarly, when America entered World War II, it was obligatory. We had been attacked, and the world was in danger of being overrun by the tyranny of Nazism and its genocidal forces.
Today, however, Putin’s war is not obligatory – except on those defending Ukraine and the democracies of Europe. Putin’s war was his choice; apparently, he wishes to enlarge his territory to include Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, and borders with NATO nations. He chose to attack civilians and to unleash his own Angel of Death on children and grandmothers in apartment buildings and maternity hospitals.
Our Passover Torah portion describes the Leil Shimurim – the Night of Watching – when the Israelites saw their redemption unfold at God’s proverbial hands.
Our prayer is that we will offer our resources, our donations, our support - that our hands today might be the extension of God’s outstretched hands, and that we can put an end to this long Night of Watching.
With Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
