Seventh Day Passover 5785: Caught Between

 A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation, Wantagh, NY on Shabbat 7th-day of Passover 5785 (April 18, 2025)

Tonight on our calendar, we arrive at the last day of Passover.  Tonight, we also commemorate the crossing of the sea.  Tradition tells us it was on the night of the seventh day that God parted the waters to allow the Israelites to walk on dry land toward their freedom and the promised land.

Just before the Israelites leave Egypt, after the commandment about the pascal sacrifice and how it will be offered in the future and by whom, we read, and not for the only time: “תּוֹרָה אַחַת יִהְיֶה לָאֶזְרָח וְלַגֵּר הַגָּר בְּתוֹכְכֶם There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells among you.”[1]  We hear this idea over and over again in our Torah, that there is to be one law for the citizen and stranger alike.  We are not supposed to oppress the strangers for we know what it was like to be oppressed strangers in the land of Egypt.

The Haggadah reminds us that we are each supposed to see ourselves as if we were personally freed from Egypt, because of what God did for me, when God brought me out of Egypt.  So tonight, on this fateful anniversary, we put ourselves in the ragged sandals of the Israelites.  Let us imagine that we have witnessed the plagues, that we have put the blood on our doorposts, and that we hurriedly packed our dough and our timbrels in our sacks just a week ago.  We are amidst the mixed multitude that took their first free steps on the 14^th of Nissan and has been walking now toward an unknown destination, only remembered in dream and in song.

Imagine what it must have felt like to be in that crowd, on the shores of the sea, and to suddenly learn that Pharaoh has changed his mind.  To feel so trapped, surrounded, caught between the choices of a return to slavery and bondage or certain death in the waters of the sea.  How do we even decide in that moment what to do?  How do we decide when the answers on both sides are equally terrible?  How do we get out of the stuck?

In the Torah we know the answer.  God calls on Moses to raise his staff in his hand and for the waters to part.  We don’t have to choose between bondage and drowning because God gives us a third option.

This feeling of being stuck between two bad choices is made most real in our sacred and powerful story of redemption.  The Jewish people being caught between two bad options is not reserved for the Torah, or for our history.  Today, we are again caught between two bad options as American Jews.  On one side, we have the rising and ongoing antisemitism of our society and the world.  On the other side, the current government’s fight against antisemitism, which brings with it a disdain and a disregard for the rule of law and due process rights.

Like the commandment in the Torah, due process is granted, according to our constitution, to all people.  The language of the Constitution is clear in the Fifth Amendment: “No person…shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”  The 14^th Amendment goes on to add that no state has the right to: “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”  The Constitution doesn’t say citizens.  The Constitution doesn’t say Americans.  The Constitution doesn’t say anything about race, national origin, or immigration status as a disqualifier for these rights.  Nor does it say that one’s faith or religious practices or beliefs disqualify someone from these legal protections.

As Jews we know personally what it means when rights are stripped from a group of people by a supremacist regime.  We know what it means when the protections of a state are capriciously taken away or denied, when those protections we believed would keep us safe are trampled on and forgotten.  A new pharaoh arose over Egypt who did not remember Joseph.  The unsaid ending of this verse of Torah is that the new Pharaoh went back on an agreement and undid the decree allowing Jacob and his family to dwell in Egypt in peace.  Throughout Medieval Europe, Jewish communities lived at the pleasure and under the protection of local lords and nobles, until those nobles tired of the Jews or owed them too much money, and so changed their minds, and terrorized them and kicked them out.  In the 20^th century, German Jewish citizens’ rights and protections were stripped from them by the Nuremberg Laws, solely because of their Judaism.  Jewish citizens of Arab nations were expatriated and deported from lands in which they’d lived for centuries and generations.  It is in part thanks to the due process rights guaranteed to all people that Jews have been able to thrive as we have in this nation.  It’s what has made this nation different.  No one can take anything away from us just because of who we are, where we come from, or what we believe.  At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. 

Today, in this nation, students whose beliefs are unpopular with the regime have been denied and deprived their due process rights.  Other strangers who live among us have been snatched off the street without court or tribunal and sent to prison camps in another country to languish.  The reason behind much of this is allegedly to fight against antisemitism.  In order to keep the Jews safe, the reasoning seems to be, we need to take away the rights of a few, select others.  In order to keep the Jews safe, we have to do away with the rule of law.  This is a false choice that we have been asked to make. 

This false choice has been called out this week by a statement from the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements in America as well as HIAS and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs.  This statement reads, in part:

“In recent weeks, escalating federal actions have used the guise of fighting antisemitism to justify stripping students of due process rights when they face arrest and/or deportation…Students have been arrested at home and on the street with no transparency as to why they are being held or deported, and in certain cases with the implication that they are being punished for their constitutionally-protected speech. Universities have an obligation to protect Jewish students, and the federal government has an important role to play in that effort; however, sweeping draconian funding cuts will weaken the free academic inquiry that strengthens democracy and society, rather than productively counter antisemitism on campus.

These actions do not make Jews—or any community—safer. Rather, they only make us less safe.

We reject any policies or actions that foment or take advantage of antisemitism and pit communities against one another; and we unequivocally condemn the exploitation of our community’s real concerns about antisemitism to undermine democratic norms and rights, including the rule of law, the right of due process, and/or the freedoms of speech, press, and peaceful protest.”

The pretexts being used against students to deny them their rights now extend to anyone suspected of being here illegally, anyone with the wrong-looking tattoo, or anyone born in another country, or with brown skin. 

Remember not to oppress the strangers for you were strangers in Egypt.  No person shall be deprived due process of law.

We are stuck, as Jews in America, today.  Between those purporting to be on our side and “fighting our enemies” with us or for us, and the laws of this land which have kept us safer than anywhere we’ve ever lived other than under our own sovereignty.  The rule of law has made it possible for us to call ourselves Jewish Americans rather than Jews in America.  The rule of law is why, when a synagogue is attacked or a Jewish Governor’s residence is firebombed, we can expect justice.  Due process is why our religion cannot be used as evidence against us.  We are being put into this position between the sea and the Pharaoh and what are we supposed to do?  Where is God to part the waters and lead us on dry land?

Whether or not any of these students have done things that put their immigration status in jeopardy is a legitimate question to be taken up by an immigration court and judge, with appropriate legal representation for the accused.  Whether or not we agree with these students and believe that some of them should be deported ought to be secondary to our belief in, advocacy for, and dedication to the rule of law and due process.  I don’t like what Mahmoud Khalil believes, what he says, or what he stands for.  And I believe that he deserves the same rights as anyone else and everyone else. 

There shall be one law for stranger and citizen alike.  No state shall deprive any person of due process of law. 

I am proud to be a member of the CCAR who joined in authoring and promoting this statement.  I am a believer in the promise of America and our rules and laws.  Or at least I have been.  We are in early dangerous stages of a shift in the very foundations of this nation, and it must be called out for what it is unkind, and ultimately un-American and unconstitutional.  These immigration raids and deportations in the name of Jewish safety have left us once again with no good options.  If we call out and fight for the rule of law, we are cozying up to antisemites and being a party to our own destruction, no better than kapos. 

If we allow for the degradation of the rule of law, we put ourselves and our families and communities at more risk and peril, perhaps not today, but certainly soon.  The point of the powerful and overused ‘first they came for” poem is not who they came for first.  The point is the last line.  “Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”  Will you say something before it personally affects you?  That’s the question inherent in the poem.  When the laws stop applying to some, when the law is exercised with prejudice and based on whims of preference, ultimately no one is safe.  When legal residents are mistakenly sent to El Salvador and there’s no check and balance, no empathy, and no attempt to right a wrongful deportation, not one of us is safe.  When immigration agents are judge and jury, no one is safe.

A false choice is put before us.  We can and should fight antisemitism in all its forms, from left, right, and center with vigilance and determination.  As the CCAR statement makes clear: “It is both possible and necessary to fight antisemitism—on campus, in our communities, and across the country—without abandoning the democratic values that have allowed Jews, and so many other vulnerable minorities, to thrive.”

This is the path on dry ground.  This is our third option.  Not to allow for antisemitism nor to allow for the decay of our legal foundations.  The way through the waters to the promised land is paved with our voices and our belief that we can have and deserve both a nation and a society in which we are safe and in which our lives are protected under the shelter of due process. 

It was not Moses or his staff that parted the waters that day.   It was a man, Nachshon the son of Amminadab, who looked around and said that there must be another option.  Neither willing to die at the hands of the Egyptians nor willing to drown, Nachshon believes deeply that God will ultimately come to save.  So, he takes the first steps into the water, before anyone else, and he keeps going until the water is up to his nostrils.  Only when he is almost fully engulfed does God finally part the waters for all the people.  Nachshon had such deep faith to take those steps, and real courage.  To take the steps onto a third path is not easy.  It can be overwhelming and scary.  It requires a lot of courage and the expectation of discomfort.  But we have no choice; our other options are untenable. 

We all have to be Nachshons, declaring that there is a dry path before us, if only we take it.  We all have to be Nachshons believing in the promise of a better future and willing to do the work to get to it.  Willing to say that neither of the easy paths is safe for us, so we will forge a new path.  When we take those first steps, when we live by the rules of our tradition which work in tandem with the rules of our free society, we call upon God’s presence to be at our side and ultimately to redeem us. 

There shall be one law for stranger and citizen alike.  No state shall deprive any person of due process of law.  

We are at the border of the sea.  The Pharaoh is behind us and closing in.  Do we have the courage to take the first steps?

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach

[1] Ex 12:49

Passover Yizkor 2020

A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation, Wantagh, NY at 7th-day Passover Festival Service.

Passover Yizkor 7th Day 2020: Coronavirus Edition

Passover is supposed to be memorable.  That’s the entire point of the holiday, if you listen to God tell it: In Exodus 12:14, in the midst of God’s instructions and forewarning about the 10th plague, we read: “וְהָיָה֩ הַיּ֨וֹם הַזֶּ֤ה לָכֶם֙ לְזִכָּר֔וֹן This day shall be to you one of remembrance: you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Eternal throughout the ages; you shall celebrate it as an institution for all time.”  Throughout the ages.  For all time.  God reiterates this just a few verses later, commanding: “You shall observe the [Feast of] Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your ranks out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day throughout the ages as an institution for all time.” (12:17)

Moses then announces this to the people twice.  After explaining placing the blood over the doorposts to cause the plague to pass over, Moses continues: “You shall observe this as an institution for all time, for you and for your descendants. (ib. 24) Moses repeats this commandment to the people after Pharaoh frees them.  “You shall keep this institution at its set time from year to year,” (13:10) Moses repeats to the people while reminding them about the matzot and the Passover sacrifice.
There is a heightened sense of the importance of memory to the Seder rituals as well.  You may not be able to remember all 10 plagues all the time, but you remember that there are 10.  If you’re like me, you always forget one. 

More than the facts or the story, we all remember what we do when we announce the plagues, we take a little wine out of the cup, to diminish our joy and mitigate the sweetness.  Whether with finger or with spoon, whether you make a point to discard the plague-y wine or lick your pinky when done, that’s memorable. It’s a memory that is made in the best way, by involving so many of the senses.  You hear the plague announced. You touch the wine.  You see the drop grow on your plate or spread on your napkin.  You smell the brisket.  You are completely immersed in an act of memory designed to be memorable. 

God makes the point that Passover is meant to be remembered not just by those who experienced it.  It is meant to be remembered always by all their descendants.  It’s no surprise the youngest sings the four questions.  At some point in your life, you were the youngest in your family.  Every one of us was.  It ensures we all learn the questions of this festival at a young age, so that we can work to figure out the answers as we get older.

We have done a pretty good job as a people of keeping this charge, of remembering and recalling the exodus, how God redeemed us with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. And we’ve been immensely creative over the generations trying to ensure continued success. 

Well, Passover is supposed to be memorable, all right.  I don’t think that any of us will ever be able to forget this one in particular.  It will be one of those years we all look back on and tell stories about.  “What did you do when the world stopped for Coronavirus?  How did you have your Seder when not everyone could be together?” the children will ask.  "We did what our people have always done," we will tell them.  "We recognized that the importance of sharing the memory of our history would not get, and could not get, vetoed by any pandemic.  We improvised, like our ancestors, and ensured that the story was told to a new generation."

“We focused on the important part,” we’ll say.  And, for each of us that was probably something different.  For all of us it was the same thing, a drive, a sense, that this holiday must be celebrated, that we must remember.  Just because we can’t be physically alongside each other didn’t stop us.  When normally we’d see tables set and filled with 10, 20, 30, 40 people, filling tables in every room, this year so many shared photos online of Seders set for one, two, four.  A computer or a tablet on the table.  We used the technology available to us and strove to be together when we could not.  And though there were fewer dishes to be done at the end of the night, and though we can be proud that we followed God’s commandment, we know it’s not how it’s supposed to be.  We felt it when we didn’t need to put the leaf in the table.  We sensed it when we didn’t need to use all the chairs.  We knew it when we divided the recipe in half. 

On this holiday, so focused on memory, the memory of the past pushed us to move forward, but it also pulls something at our souls.  We’re supposed to be together.  We’re supposed to be alongside each other.  And the absence of those who would have been there only heightens the absence of those who could not be there.  It’s not just those who can’t travel who we miss; it’s those who are now sheltered under God’s wings, who were with us at full tables just a few years back, or many years back which only feel like a few.  The full tables of the past are what we miss especially this year. 

The full tables of Seders past render an image of what the Seder was always supposed to be: generations together, sharing in tradition.  The full tables of the Seders of our past burst with memories of their own.  They tell the stories of our families which make us who we are.  The full tables of our past burst with love: for us and from us.  Today, as we transition to our service of memory, our Yizkor on this last day of our festival, we pause to seat our beloved departed at places of honor at the full Seder tables in our memory, our zikaron. 

These Seders in our souls burst with the blessings of those who came before us, who taught us the importance of the traditions we worked so hard to fulfill this year.  The Seders in our souls bring us closer to all those whose absence we feel every year, and whose presence we feel every year.  We feel them with us when we push ourselves to make the recipe the same way she did.  We feel them with us when we tell that joke that was told every year.  We feel them with us when we hear the familiar melody that they first taught us.  Our loved ones of blessed memory are with us at every Seder, as they are with us at all times, in our memory. 

No ZOOM password required.

Hearing the Call, Answering the Call: Vayikra 5778

A version of this sermon was delivered on Friday, March 16 at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow.

Happy New Year!  

I know, it’s not Rosh HaShanah or January 1, or even Tu BiShevat, but according to the Torah, today, Rosh Chodesh Nisan, when there’s no moon in the sky, is the first day of the first of the months.  During this month, in 14 days’ time, we will celebrate Passover.  And the special Shabbat we celebrate tonight and tomorrow, known as Shabbat haChodesh, the Shabbat of The Month emphasizes the importance of this New Year ’s Day.  Each year on the Jewish calendar, the Shabbat preceding the first of the month of Nisan gets this special treatment.  It just so happens that this year, the first of the month falls on Shabbat.  So, again, Happy New Year!

Now a question, Mah nishtanah ha Shabbat ha-zeh mikol hashabbatot?  Why is this Shabbat different than all other Shabbats?  Well, on all other Sabbaths, we read our Torah portion, but on this Sabbath, traditionally, in addition to our weekly Torah reading from Vayikra, the first verses of the book of Leviticus, we also would read 20 verses from chapter 12 of the book of Exodus where God commands Moses and Aaron to tell the people that this month is to be the first month of the year.  [Don’t worry, Josh, we’re not asking you to learn any more Torah for your Bar Mitzvah at the last minute; I’m only going to talk about it tonight.]  We read in these 20 verses from Exodus, the basic rules for Passover.  It’s like a Rabbinically programmed reminder popping up on your smartphone: Ding! Passover is coming soon. Ding! Remember don’t eat leaven for 7 days.  Ding! Don’t forget to prepare your lamb for the sacrifice.  Ding!  Don’t forget to get yourself ready for the freedom that is imminently at hand.

So, as we begin this new month, this first of the months, we recognize that our calendar begins with a call from God to get ready for freedom.  Our new year begins with a sense that God’s redemption is close at hand, but requires our participation.  Our year starts with preparation for an intimate encounter with God. The message of the call, therefore, is much more than it seems on its face: “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.”[1]

It’s especially fitting when this special Shabbat HaChodesh falls on the week we read from the first verses of Leviticus, the third book of the Torah which outlines primarily the sacrificial system among other laws.  This confluence of Torah and Shabbat HaChodesh won’t happen again until the year 2029 or 5789, for those keeping count.  Like the verses from Exodus which are traditionally read for the special Shabbat, this week, we read of a call from God to Moses, and a call which has underneath it a lot more than it may seem at first glance.  Like the call to Moses and Aaron announcing the new month, this week’s Torah reading begins with God calling out to Moses, but in a special way.

            וַיִּקְרָ֖א אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר יי אֵלָ֔יו מֵאֹ֥הֶל מוֹעֵ֖ד לֵאמֹֽר׃

“The Eternal called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying...” (Lev. 1:1)  The first word, Vayikra is important, and worth mentioning.  Whereas many times in the Torah God calls to Moses or Moses and Aaron the use of Vayikra emphasizes a special call, a call of divine purpose.  Rashi teaches us that, “The word Vayikra precedes all [Divine] commandments and statements, which is a term of endearment used by the heavenly angels.”[2]  Here, Rashi points out that the Angels in heaven also use this term when calling out to one another, as we hear in our Kedushah prayer, thus emphasizing the special nature of this word.

But Rashi also teaches that this moment, the Vayikra moment for Moses, was special.  No one else heard this call from God, just Moses.  It allowed Moses a personal moment with God before he was then told what he needed to focus on in terms of the sacrifices.  As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out, the literal translation of the verse seems to be redundant in terms of God’s speaking to Moses: “[God] called to Moses, and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying …”  Why does the Torah need to tell us that God called to Moses and then God spoke to Moses?  Sacks answers: “God’s call to Moses was something prior to and different from what God went on to say. The latter were the details. The former was the summons, the mission – not unlike God’s first call to Moses at the burning bush where [God] invited him to undertake the task that would define his life: leading the people out of exile and slavery to freedom in the Promised Land.”[3]

This is an important notion in Judaism: a call before the details.  Judaism has always been a religion that focused on a sense of being divinely called to perform commandments, and act ethically in the world.  It is that pull inside of us which draws us to the side of good and right, and the side of compassion and consideration rather than the alternative.  The call comes from within, but that piece within us is divine.  Like the Vayikra in our portion that only Moses could hear, only we can hear the divine voice in our souls calling us to goodness and chessed, lovingkindness.

We all can hear the call from God, the call to action, the call to make things better.  Without the call, the drive from deep within our soul, the details of creating a Divinely-inspired existence on Earth cannot come to be. 

This week, and in the last few weeks, it has been wonderful and moving to see so many young people across this nation answering a call, as they walk out of their classrooms and schools to protest the violence in their schools and in our nation, and the sacrifice of their safety that our politicians have made in order to appease the gun lobby and manufacturers.  These young people have started a movement for change that seemed impossible just a month ago.  Whether they feel they are called by God or not, they are answering a drive deep within themselves to demand change, to demand that the nation live up to its ideals of life, liberty, and pursuing happiness.  They rightly claim that they are being denied their right to life in order to ensure others’ rights to guns. 

These young people are showing, and will again on March 24 as they March For Their Lives, the greatness in America, that people can feel compelled and called to demand a change for the better, and then use their voice, their feet, and their vote to work to make it happen.  

For the first time in a long time, many feel like the tide has begun to turn on this issue.  It frustratingly didn’t happen after Sandy Hook.  It didn’t happen after the Pulse or Las Vegas Massacres or after Charleston, or any of the others for which we have mourned and wrung our hands.  But now, a wave of change seems afoot.  New laws restricting gun access are being passed.  More people than ever are engaging in the issue.  We can attribute this shift to many reasons; among them, we see within these young people a drive to say out loud that the way of the world, the way of allowing all these guns, is not ok with them.  

The nation was crying out for someone to answer the call.  We adults had seemingly given up.  We adults had given in.  We had been beaten down.  “Who will I send?  Who will go for me?”  God demands in the book of Isaiah.  And Isaiah answers the call: “Here I am, send me!”[4]  These young people, thank God, the March for Our Lives movement, the #NeverAgain movement, have stood up and responded like the prophet when the adults around them did not.  Here we are!  Send us!  

We didn’t answer the call previously.  Now, they are leading the way.  They need our support.  They need our prayers.  They need our feet marching alongside them.  I will be with them in Westbury on the afternoon of the 24^th.  You are welcome to join me.

Our support can commence by hearing the divine call within our souls.  Listen…Vayikra, and God will call us to do the right thing.  Listen…Vayikra, and God will call us to compassion, to justice, to life.  Listen…Vayikra, and God calls out to us, reminding us that we know what we need to do.  We just need the will. 

May the divine call give us that will.  May this New Year of our freedom beginning tonight be filled with our hearing God’s call.  May it be filled with the freedom to live without fear in our schools, at our concerts, our movie theaters, our places of worship, and our dance clubs.  May we hear God’s call and respond, and work to make this year a year of peace and of life.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy New Year!

---

[1] Ex 12:2

[2] Rashi on Lev 1:1

[3] Sacks, Jonathan . The Call Vayikra 5778,

[4] Isaiah 6:8