A Passover Wish

I am excited about spring finally coming to Cape May County after such a long winter. With the snow finally ending we begin to have thoughts of spring and renewal. It’s with this we approach one of the special Jewish seasons, the time of Passover. Passover is that unique period when the concept of freedom is set in our minds and we prepare to rebuild and renew our faith as we contemplate the concepts of freedom and slavery and our connection to God. As we approach Passover my mind is drawn to Moses and the miracle that was his life and his existence as the redeemer of Am Yisrael (the people of Israel).
We know little about the man Moses except that he was raised in the court of Pharaoh’s much like a prince. He was the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter and as the story goes, she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid Ammatah “to fetch it” (Exodus 2:5). Another interpretation of this verse renders the Hebrew word Ammatah as “her arm,” rather than “her maid.” Many believe that this is to teach us that her arm was extended to enable her to reach the basket.
If Moses’ basket lay beyond her reach, why did Pharaoh’s daughter extend her arm? Could she possibly have anticipated the miracle that her hand would be extended? There is a profound lesson here for each and every one of us. Often, we are confronted with a situation that is beyond our capacity to rectify. Someone or something is crying out for our help, but by all natural means the matter is simply beyond our reach.
So we resign ourselves to inactivity, reasoning that the little we can do won’t change matters anyway. But Pharaoh’s daughter heard a child’s cry and extended her arm. An unbridgeable distance lay between her and the basket containing the weeping infant, making her action seem utterly pointless. But for Am Yisrael the action changed the world.
I find it fascinating that this Gentile (non-Jewish) woman put aside the bigotry of her people to make such a personal act of defiance against her king and her father. Many times in our life we are confronted by attempts to change something on a large scale but resolve to ourselves that the task is too great to make such a profound change. We look at the environment or racism and say, it’s too deep, I can’t make a difference so why bother to try? We see here how one act of courage and defiance can put the path of redemption from injustice in motion and change the world for the better.
God saw how Pharaoh’s daughter made the effort to change what needed to be changed and then took the next step to set in motion the redemption of Am Yisrael. All this would never have happened without the effort of Pharaoh’s daughter reaching out her arm, with God extending its reach, to enable her to save a life and raise the great human being that gave Am Yisrael redemption.
I believe that it’s these small acts of the daily victory that change the world for the better. I remember watching an old civil rights documentary where volunteers offered to give rides to people who were walking to adhere to the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala. and who opened their houses for meals to the hungry volunteers.
Times have changed and we now recognize such heroes as Martin Luther King and Medger Evers, but they would never have achieved the dream of equality without those few people who offered their cars and their kitchens to help the Montgomery Boycott work. Each one of those individuals gave something of themselves that was not large but helped set in motion a major change in the world.
Today, we offer a simple act of change by having our Passover Seder and inviting those friends and strangers to partake in our meal and share our story of freedom from slavery. Beth Judah Temple is having a community Seder on March 30 at 6 p.m. in which we will share our food and faith in retelling the story of our people’s deliverance from slavery to freedom in the hopes of inspiring others to open their hearts to the possibility of changing the world for the better.
Now that we are entering the time of Passover let us take time out and contemplate freedom and remember where freedom begins and freedom ends. If we take hold of these daily achievements of the small scale we as individuals in our community can change things for the better without having to feel that we are missing the boat because we are not sacrificing ourselves on the large scale.
We can initiate change with the simple act of the Passover Seder meal where we retell our story and make a promise to change from within. Take this time to give Tzadukah (charity), set aside extra time for volunteering, and try to be less judging of others who may stretch our patience for this month. Let us see what great change we can make through individual actions like reaching our arm out to help one extra person. That person might change the world in many ways.
Rabbi Jeffrey Lipschultz is the spiritual leader Beth Judah Temple in Wildwood. He welcomes your comments at dvjewish@rof.net