A Passover Greeting and Hostage Prayer

Editor’s Note: This short dispatch is intended to share brief thoughts of mine and a special prayer from the Hostage Family Forum. During this “holiday” week State of Tel Aviv will be publishing some very moving podcasts with hostage families, exploring this surreal but very real moment in Jewish history. Our celebration of freedom this year is profoundly marred. We must face it.

“In every generation, each person is obligated to see themselves as if they had participated in the Exodus from Egypt.”

This sentence in the Haggadah – the guide “book” for  the Passover ritual - is recited at the seder table, every year, and reflects a core sensibility of the Jewish people and nation. We are reminded to remember. Not just what happened, factually, but, more importantly, that we cultivate the capacity to empathize and imagine. We must never see ourselves as being so powerful or untouchable as to render us immune to suffering and persecution.

My late father was a Holocaust survivor. More than once, he said to me: “Don’t tell me it won’t happen again. Because it did happen.”

We lived in Canada. Many people say they never experienced “real” antisemitism until October 7th. Sadly, I did. Not infrequently. There is the “in your face” antisemitism, which leaves no room for doubt. And there is the more nuanced variety. I am familiar with both.

My father’s caution was not just prescient. It was based in knowledge of history and his own lived experience. I absorbed his well-founded fear and heightened survival awareness.

I have always thought that it would happen where and when we least expect it. To me that meant America. Or Israel. Or both. And that has come to pass.

I have also often said that “it” never happens the same way twice. Another lesson history has taught us. Repeatedly.

In Israel the mood is bleak. The country is mired in Gaza. Hostages remain in captivity. People are depleted.

So many of the hostage families are broken. Families without fathers, husbands, sons and brothers. Missing daughters and sisters. Knowing they are mistreated, unbearably, and powerless to save them. Many are no longer able to function. Parents do not work. Children are deeply traumatized and unreachable. “Normal” things like family gatherings are impossible. Many children refuse to sit at the Friday night table until their father comes home. A seder? A celebration of freedom? We cannot begin to conjure their agony. But we must try.

Tonight, on Erev Pesach, there will be group seders for the kibbutzim that were attacked on October 7^th. They all have family and friends still in Hamas captivity. And there will be a large, community seder in Hostage Square in central Tel Aviv, in solidarity with those waiting for a loved one to return.

The Hostage Family Forum, a privately organized NGO that has been supporting the “hostage families” since October 7^th, has published a special Haggadah to be used this year. I am not a religious person but, like many people of the Jewish faith, I find deep meaning in this holiday, and particularly this year.

It is among the highest values in Judaism that prisoners and captives be rescued, even if it requires the paying of a ransom.

Just as we are to see ourselves as having been newly liberated from slavery in Egypt, so we must see ourselves as being held captive by Hamas. Today.

The families of the hostages and those who have been murdered request that you consider adding an additional chair to your table tonight, remembering all of those taken from us on October 7^th. And add a fifth cup of wine to your seder ritual with this blessing:

May it be God's will that all expressions of salvation be realized for each captive. "I will bring you out." "I will redeem you." "I will take you as my own." "I will bring you home." 

May they all merit to return to their families, those murdered to be buried and those still alive to be rehabilitated, in our time. Amen.

Wishing those who celebrate a meaningful Passover holiday. And for all, especially the hostages, may we know freedom.