I grew up in Woodmere in the days when Pesach was called Passover and walking home from shul we saw cars lined up along the entire Barnard Avenue. Their drivers and passengers were already inside the well-lit homes, crunching matzah, eating brisket, and talking about the Yankees and Mets.
Today, there are no parked cars lined up on the streets of Woodmere, and there are multitudes coming home to Sedorim, where they won’t be crunching matzah until after an elaborate Maggid packed with divrei Torah is recited. And when the children are talking about the Lions and the Bears, it’s not about football teams, but about makkas arov.
The kids from the Woodmere Sedorim of the 1960s — where are they? Some are grown men and women who have no affiliation. Those with some Passover memories are begging their children and grandchildren to stop by for a bit of matzah before heading to the movies. Or maybe before they are running out to join the latest protest against the “genocide” that Jews (yes, Jews!) are accused of committing against peace-loving Arab innocents in Gaza.
For them, Passover meant exactly that — passing over anything important or relevant. For us, it’s about passing down, speaking the story.
Most of our religious speaking in shul and in our homes is between us and the Ribono Shel Olam: davening, Tehillim, limud mussar. Even limud haTorah is a tefillah to the Ribono Shel Olam. But Pesach is different. It’s about speaking to the future. It’s about taking a bit of the past generations and passing it to the next generation through our generation. They, in turn, talk to us. We must talk to each other. They ask. We answer. Parent to child. Child to parent. Zaidies and bubbies to the next generations. And vice versa. They ask. And we answer. They inquire. We communicate. We impart.
When I was a young bochur in Ponovezh Yeshiva in the 1970s, I remember facing the gilded aron kodesh. There stood Rav Chaim Berman, animatedly retelling Yetzias Mitzrayim. No gematrios. No roshei teivos. Just the simple, powerful story — every day. Thirty years later, he was still there, telling it again. Same passion. Same story. Same miracles.
Recently, I thought about all the projects and divrei Torah that our children bring home. Everything is wonderful, every shtickel Torah is beautiful. Every gematria and roshei teivos and pilpul is astounding. But I do not think that any of it comes close to experiencing the true story according to our sages and the way that the Baal Haggadah outlines it for us. What happened? The wonders and the miracles. The simple faith that was planted and whose long branches bore the fruits that sustained us in our darkest hours. It is those miracles and the emunah that we root in our children that will get them through the nisyonos of their generation. It is our job to at least one night a year mesmerize our families with our faith as we relate to them the stories of our founding.
I sometimes wonder if all the problems we have today — and all those that began with the Haskalah — did not happen because someone down the line did not, or was not able to, tell the story with the same zest, enthusiasm, clarity, and confidence as was told to him. Maybe when the mesorah is muddled and murky, we are left with rusty links in a chain that may be about to snap. It is shocking how simple Jews can be so detached from the reality of their history and the events that forged their very essence.
My zaide, Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky, once related to me a horrific story that a colleague of his shared back in Lithuania. This friend was the rabbi of a small shtetel where lived a very ignorant laborer who somehow fell into some money. Though he was the same am ha’aretz as before, money can do wonders for a person’s self-image. And so, before the Yom Tov of Pesach, this laborer called his rabbi to a corner and said that he would like to discuss a very important yet private matter with him.
When the rabbi agreed, the man whispered to him, “This year, I would like to get some of the special matzos.”
The rabbi looked at him, bewildered. “All our matzos are special. I supervise the entire process from the harvesting of the wheat until they come out of the oven. What kind of matzos are you talking about?”
Again, the man was cryptic. In an even more desperate voice, he reiterated his plea: “This year I have given much more charity. I am even sitting near the mizrach vant of the bais medrash. I truly think that I can finally get some of the special matzos.”
Stupefied, the rabbi shook his head in wonder. “Can you be more specific?”
This time, the man motioned for the rabbi to draw closer. He looked around furtively. When he saw that they were not being watched, he whispered in the rabbi’s ear: “I want the matzos with the blood.”
My grandfather’s friend recoiled in horror. It took him a tremendous amount of time to convince this Jewish man that there never was — and never will be — a matzah with one of the most forbidden consumables in the Torah: blood.
Imagine! For years upon years we are trying to fight the blood libel, and now, we not only have to fight our enemies, but also those horrific notions within our own community.
I tell this story because I am frightened by the erosion of mesorah that seems to be treated as an anachronism.
A friend, Dr. Charles Mitgang, told me a shocking story. A few years back, his father, Reb Zalman Yisroel, a chazzan, was walking one winter day in Miami Beach. Wearing a short-sleeve shirt, he encountered two young mothers pushing strollers. They noticed the elderly man with the large black yarmulka walking toward them. In Yiddish, they said, loudly enough for him to hear, “Kik! Er gait a kapalutsh, uber er hut ois shtreiner tattoos oif zeiner forder-ahrmer…” (“Look at him! He goes with a yarmulke, but he has tattoos on his arms!”)
When I heard the story, I could not believe it. Chazzan Mitgang did not have an anchor tattoo from the Navy. He had numbers — the numbers from Auschwitz tattooed on his arms. Time and the relative calm of America did not let it fade from his arms. But it has faded from some of our young minds.
It is sadly shocking, but if the story is true, somewhere, like the man who asked for blood matzos, there are young women pushing strollers, speaking Yiddish, who don’t know the story behind those tattoos.
I am in the education business, and I love to shmooze with young adults and teens about history. It’s sad to find out that so many have no idea about the many trials and tribulations that we have lived through throughout history. It is sad that many intelligent young men and women do not know the names of the Torquemadas, the Chmielnickis, the Stalins, the Haj Amin al-Husseinis — among the myriad sonei Yisroel whom we refer to in the Haggadah as “omdim aleinu lechaloseinu.” Perhaps worse, they don’t know what we lived through during those eras and what we did to survive. They think of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and the authors of substantial equivalency as the greatest enemies and nisyonos we endure.
My rebbi, Rav Mendel Kaplan, once overheard a group of bochurim talking about the newly-elected Jimmy Carter, calling him a rasha. “Rasha?” he chided. “We had resho’im! We knew resho’im! Carter is a baby compared to them!”
Of course, the Seder night is not about enumeration of evil, but it is important to impart a sense of golus history into children living in a blissful America that now seems to be on the cusp of gloom. They must always know the past to have emunah in the future. And they must be poised to prepare.
The Seder night is the time for every Jew to join hands across the sea of time and let his fingers grasp the soul of the forebears who were actually there. Because if the chain of truth is snapped, and the mesorah is treated merely as a relic of the past, then we have lost a generation.
What is left are simple Jews turning a curious ear to the naysayers, their self-esteem and national pride converted into a murky cloud of meaningless customs. They eventually nod their heads to Holocaust deniers, blood libelers, and deniers of the Jew’s eternal connection to Eretz Yisroel.
If we are not clear among ourselves who we are, where we come from, and where we are supposed to be heading, then our enemies will do it for us. And the ramifications are frightening.
So when your child asks the Mah Nishtanah this year, make sure that you really do know the answers. And if you do not, then make sure that you find the right person to ask as well.
It may not only be a discussion that forges your relationship. It may be the discussion that ensures our future.
