Chapter 7: Our Living Saga

Summary: The Seder is more relevant than ever as we live through the ongoing process of Mashiach and redemption.

“In Israel, to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.” -- David Ben-Gurion

“A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human, is what this individual person, has been created for.”  -- Martin Buber

“On that day, God formed a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your offspring I have given this land…”” -- Genesis 15:18

“If it is right, it happens—the main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.” -- John Steinbeck

The Story of Us

We now understand that the Haggadah does not tell the Exodus story because that would not help us achieve Da’at. Instead, the Haggadah tries to engage us just enough to eventually feel that we too, sitting at this table, are part of the narrative. We have lived through and experienced the effects of history and therefore have the unique ability to achieve what generations before us could not – we can achieve Da’at in its fullest form to date.¹ The key is to realize that not only should we feel connected to our Jewish roots, but that we are part of a living saga. The events we commemorate are alive – they are part of an ongoing story about us!

The Haggadah is perhaps more relevant to our lives than the top story of today’s news feed and more meaningful to our generation than any other. Who can better testify to the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham than our own generation? In 2021, the Jewish people are in an unprecedented situation. It is clear that the complete Messianic Era is not yet upon us. A large percentage of Jews, for good reason, reside outside of Israel, and we are far from the promise of world peace that the Messianic Era will provide.² But for the past 80 years, we have maintained political control of the land of Israel, and millions of Jews are settled there permanently. Many Jews forget or fail to acknowledge all the implausible (many might say miraculous) events and circumstances that enabled us to establish the country and to live and thrive there. After nearly 80 years, I suppose we can be forgiven for taking these things for granted sometimes. But the Haggadah teaches that we should always be mindful that we are living testimony to the fulfillment of God’s promise.

In 1945, the Jews had just endured one of the most terrible acts of genocide in human history. In 1948, when the state of Israel declared independence, the Jews had been in exile for nearly 2000 years, scattered around the world, banished from one country after another, suffering endless persecution and discrimination. Never before had a people gone into exile and returned to their homeland (with the exception of the Babylonian exile 2500 years earlier, which was much smaller in scope). In the War for Independence, the Israeli army was outnumbered 10:1, but somehow Israel triumphed. At its founding, Israel was a barren piece of desert real estate. It was a tiny country in a constant state of warfare, terrorism, economic blockade, with no infrastructure and no natural resources, and it had to absorb millions of immigrants, a huge strain even on a developed economy. Yet within a few years, the country was not only reborn, the population exploded, and the desert bloomed and began exporting fruits and vegetables to the rest of the world. In the first 6 years of its existence, the population of Israel doubled. Now there are more Jews living in Israel than ever in history, soon to be over 50% of the worldwide Jewish population. Per capita, Israel now has more hi-tech startup companies, physicians, and scientific papers than any country in the world.³ And perhaps most astonishing of all is that our Torah and our religion remained intact, and our culture and our ancient Hebrew language were revived. All these events are so extraordinary as to seem supernatural, and indeed, some of them, if not all, were predicted⁴ in the Torah.⁵

An Inevitable Inheritance

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of our ongoing saga is that the Jews who led us back to Israel were the ones most disconnected from Abraham and God and Judaism.⁶ The vast majority of individuals who championed the cause of Zionism did not believe in the veracity of the Biblical narrative. If you think about it, this development was the greatest possible fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. Why? Because it demonstrates that our inheritance was and is unconditional – it did not matter that the founders valued the land for secular reasons, or even that they considered making a homeland elsewhere.⁷

In this context, we can better understand a perplexing perspective about the four Sons that is brought by some Kabbalistic works, teaching that the son who is on the highest level and will usher in the Messianic era is the one who does not even know how to ask – the child who at best seems to be on the second lowest level!⁸ This child represents those who are most alienated from the Torah,⁹ the very same group who most strongly supported our claim to Israel – the group who demonstrated that our inheritance is unconditional.¹⁰

Not only is God’s Covenant unconditional, but it is inevitable as well. As we explained in Chapter 6, the concept of leil shimurim reveals that God’s promise to Abraham was embedded in Creation, which means that it applies to all future exiles as well, including the one we are experiencing in our own day and age. Our redemption, our inheritance of Israel, is a foregone conclusion, not an event we must justify. Once we have accepted this truth, we have the essential response to any attacks on the right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.¹¹

My Right Hand

There are many who try to justify our presence in Israel by bringing historical evidence of Jews occupying that land for longer continuous periods than other people.¹² Others claim our right to the land is based on the Holocaust and centuries of persecution, with no other refuge available.¹³ Still others base our rights to the land on our Biblical narrative.¹⁴ I would suggest that while all of these reasons are valid, none is necessary.

Rashi’s commentary¹⁵ on the first verse in the Chumash quotes Rabbi Yitzchak, who says that God wrote the story of Creation specifically for these kinds of attackers. He writes, “Should someone claim that the Jews have no rights to the land we should respond: “The entire earth belongs to God; He created it (this we learn from the story of the Creation) and gave it to whomever He deemed proper.” There have been many who quote this text to affirm Jewish rights over Israel,¹⁶ but that is a weak argument. Most certainly, someone who challenges our right to Israel would not recognize the validity of this commentary on the Torah, and so such an argument allows the challenger to use his own sacred books or secular arguments to justify their own claim to the land of Israel. Surely Rabbi Yitzchak understood this, so why did he suggest this debatable response? I believe he had a different intention; he sought to identify the principles upon which we stand and make the point that we need not respond at all. Rabbi Yitzchak was pointing out that it is a waste of time to defend the legitimacy of our inheritance, just as it is foolish to defend an accepted fact of nature like gravity. Can we question gravity because we find it inconvenient? It is a fact of nature, and not only is there no point in challenging it, but you will ignore its existence at your peril. If you maintain a hold on reality, you will acknowledge it, regardless of your feelings. Like the laws of nature, the land of Israel will eventually be revealed as the land of the Jewish people.

Imagine that someone approaches you and claims that your right hand belongs to him. Would you feel the need to justify why your hand is rightfully yours, by saying, for example, “My right hand has been with me since I was born?” Perhaps this is what the Biblical verse means when it says, “If I forget thee Jerusalem, may I forget my right hand.”¹⁷ Israel is like our physical body. It belongs to us, and in due time, that fact will become as clear as the fact that your right hand is inherently part of you.

The Chosen

Moreover, Rabbi Yitzchak’s point is particularly helpful when we grapple with our designation as the “Chosen people.”¹⁸ As mentioned earlier, we may feel uncomfortable with this concept, because we do not want to claim we are more worthy or superior, and therefore many Jews try to justify why we are chosen,¹⁹ deny that we are chosen at all,²⁰ or reframe the designation by claiming it means not that we are special but that we have more responsibility.²¹

However, I think the only reasonable approach is found in an analogy to marriage. When God chose the Jewish people, He married them, so to speak.²² You cannot change the fact of a marriage by approaching a married woman/man and asserting, “You shouldn’t have married him/her, you should have chosen me.” We cannot change the facts. God made a choice, and we may not be better than other nations, but we are God’s people.²³ The goal of the seder is to help us appreciate that gift.

Waiting for Mashiach

Understanding that our Covenant was embedded in Creation is also the key to dealing with our uncertainty about the Mashiach, the Messianic Age. So often, people approach me in synagogue, genuinely concerned about what will happen during the era of Mashiach. They ponder, what will life be like? Will we still have Pizza, Starbucks and Whole Foods? I tell them I don’t know the details - you can’t know the details – but I reassure them they need not worry, because God promised that it will be a wonderful life -- an era of peace and tranquility, with no more war.²⁴ The world will not be perfect; people will still experience some level of poverty,²⁵ but no one will have to defend against cruelty, persecution, or neglect, and people will be much happier than they are today. Nonetheless, many people still wonder, how can we have confidence in this prediction, without knowing some of the details?

We find this dilemma in Vayechi, the last weekly Torah portion in the book of Genesis where Jacob gathers his children together to bless them.²⁶ While most Torah portions begin with a new line of text, the first sentence of Vayechi continues instead on the same line where the previous portion ends, with only a minimal break/separation between the two portions. The Sages call this a “clogged” new paragraph.²⁷ Why is the section constructed that way? The Sages say that this unique typographical feature is designed to illuminate the story. When Jacob gathers his children, God gives him a message about the End of Times, revealing some of the details, including precisely when it will occur. Just as Jacob is about to share this information with his sons, his head becomes “clogged” -- he suddenly develops amnesia about those details.²⁸ I always wondered why God would choose to reveal this information but then hide it again. What was the point?

I think the answer is that on the one hand, we must have the conviction that the redemption is coming, giving an overall meaning to our existence. But we must maintain our belief without knowing the details, which can only emerge gradually, in due²⁹ time.³⁰

That mandate is what we articulate in the Ani Ma’amin, Rambam’s Thirteen Principles of Faith. Our belief in the Mashiach is the only principle that is followed by an elaboration. For example, we simply declare, I believe that the Creator blessed be He is first and last, or I believe all the words of the Prophets are true. But we express our belief in the Mashiach by reciting, I believe in the coming of the Mashiach and even though he tarries, despite this I will wait for him every day. This teaches that we must patiently await the details of Mashiach as they emerge. So, the popular song, “We want Moshiach now; we don’t want to wait” is the exact opposite of what we are supposed to express, because part of the obligation to believe in the Messianic era is that we must wait. Our role is to accept the truth of the Mashiach coming even though the details are hidden from us, just as they were hidden from Yaakov.

Therefore, when people assert that they know the exact date the Mashiach is going to arrive, or they know precisely who it is, they are obviously mistaken. Although we have some traditions that provide additional characterizations, those are either vague or possibly allegorical.³¹ The Mashiach will be nothing like what we may imagine, because in truth, we are not supposed to know the particulars, and the Mashiach will almost certainly come in a way that is unexpected.³²

It’s a Process

As frustrating as it is, not only will the details of our future redemption be unpredictable, but they will also be events we must wait for with patience. This would explain why the weekly Torah portion in which the Exodus occurs is called by the prosaic name Bo. The Torah tells us at the beginning of that portion about God’s command to Moses and Aaron: Bo el Paraoh, go to Pharaoh. However, the Hebrew word for go is lech, not bo, which means to come. It seems that the Torah used the wrong verb in this context.³³

We see this word used improperly in the context of redemption elsewhere. When the Talmud refers to the Exodus being embedded in Creation, it uses the term meshumar uba, the Exodus was guarded and ba, it comes.³⁴ What is the purpose of adding that phrase, uba, and it comes?

This word, ba, illuminates the precise wording of Rambam in his Thirteen principles of Faith, where he says I believe in the coming (b’viat, from the word ba, to come) of the Mashiach, and even though he tarries, despite this I will wait every day for his approaching/coming (sheyavo, again from the word ba, to come). Why did Rambam expound on the basic principle of Mashiach this way?

The verb ba/to come, adds invaluable insight to God’s redemption. Ba implies that it is not enough to know that Mashiach is embedded in Creation and that the era of Mashiach is inevitable. We must also acknowledge and appreciate the gradual nature of the process which will unfold, a development analogous to the lengthy story of the Exodus from Egypt. Mashiach, our redemption, is constantly emerging within the process of ba, it is coming, it is approaching, it is emerging – it must be an extended process and cannot simply constitute a quick-fix.³⁵

Even though our tradition states that God’s sends redemption keheref ayin, in the blink of an eye,³⁶ suddenly and unexpectedly, we still must wait for that moment. That is why Rambam adds, achakeh, I will wait. The ultimate purpose of the redemptive process is not salvation, but the experience of going through the emergent process of redemption, which is captured by these words from the same root - ba, bo, biat and yavo.

This augmented process gives us the extensive direct experience necessary to attain Da’at, the kind of experience that Abraham could not possibly have obtained. During the Exodus, the Jewish people endured a prolonged process of pain, represented by the blood of circumcision and the blood of the pascal lamb³⁷ God could have saved us from Egypt immediately, but He chose otherwise, because we needed to experience and appreciate every single step along the way of redemption, from our humble beginnings, to the ten plagues, to the hasty preparation of the matzah, to the miraculous episode of splitting the Red Sea that we elaborate upon during the seder. Mishumar uba is not a passive form of waiting. It is a process that is ongoing and requires our active engagement.

Just as we have actively experienced other dramatic (and oftentimes painful) episodes in our history, we must endure the process of biyat hamashiach, the emergence of our redemption. As we witness history unfold, our assignment in exile is to appreciate the opportunity the freedom of choice gives us, allowing us to align our personal fate with the destiny embedded in God’s creation. Once we understand that Mashiach is a process, not simply a singular event, we can then shift our focus to determining how we will contribute to the outcome with the meaningful details of our own individual lives as we go through that process.³⁸

Surprise!

This would explain why our various “redeemers” such as Joseph and Moses, were uniquely immersed in the foreign environment and secular culture of Egypt. They were both so engaged in the culture of their host country, that in certain respects, they were considered more Egyptian than Jewish. Our tradition³⁹ teaches that Mashiach will be a person similarly immersed in secular life, undoubtably adding to the uncertainty of redemption. It is important that we appreciate the positive aspects of our exile and even cherish this time in history, not merely tolerate it. We are meant to embrace the prophecy of our ancient texts as we fulfil them and bring them to life.

This approach is also the model for achieving our status in the ‘World to Come’ – a world we know absolutely nothing about. Despite the importance of the afterlife, God wants us to stay fully committed to our lives in this world, while we await our eventual discovery of the World to Come.⁴⁰ One way to understand this is to consider what it is like to watch an exciting movie for the first time. Part of what keeps us engrossed is the element of surprise – we have no idea how the story will unfold. For this reason, there is not one mention of the afterlife anywhere in the Torah - not one detail.⁴¹ Similarly, although we can be certain that Mashiach will come, we do not know when or how, and so we remain engaged in our current lives while we wait.

As we mentioned earlier, no one in the world could have predicted how Israel would emerge; it was so astonishing that some religious people still claim it was and continues to be the work of Satan.⁴² There are others who maintain a ‘wait and see’ approach; they are uncertain if history has even approached Messianic times, because things have not turned out as they imagined.⁴³ But if we are honest about developments in the land of Israel, it is inescapable that God, through His guiding of history, simply caught us by surprise!

The Exodus story is almost a sidebar to the point of our celebration of Passover today, particularly for those who live in the exile and are most comparable to the Jews who endured the first exile in Egypt. The Haggadah is a living document, meant to make us see that we are the protagonists in a dramatic saga which is unfolding before our eyes. We cannot know what will happen next in our individual or collective lives, nor should we want to.⁴⁴ We can only be certain that whatever happens, it will emerge within the context of this ancient connection between God and our forefather Abraham, with the land of Israel as its core. If we choose to deny or ignore the authenticity of this extraordinary bond, we are destined to become frustrated with the hollow minutiae of a life without design, a life with no meaning.  

As we leave our seder, we can find ourselves in a very different place from where we began. If we acknowledge the truth of our Covenant with God, we can enjoy the gift of freedom to focus on the kind of people we want to become. We can become fully engaged in life and develop the kind of relationships we wish to have with God, Torah, family, and friends, all within the context of the Covenant. We have learned from the Haggadah that even with our redemption from Egypt predetermined, the Jewish people had a vital role to play. Once they became certain that freedom was inevitable, they could act with such determination and alacrity that their bread had no time to rise and thus became Matzah – the bread of liberation. We too, confident that we have begun the emergent process the Talmud calls the Footsteps of Messiah,⁴⁵ can live our lives with comparable enthusiasm and vigor. Using our unique capabilities and circumstances, we can make our own unprecedented contribution to the destiny of the Jewish people. Each of us is the protagonist in this “movie production” called Jewish history, and if we learn to focus on our individual roles within that script, we will end up playing a vital part in the inevitable, but surprising, “happily ever after” ending of the Messianic Era.⁴⁶