The Passover Seder and the Haggadah reading, about the Israelite-Jews escaping oppressive Egypt and annihilation decree should remind us, Jews, about the era of the 2000 years Jews' forced exile from their homeland, Israel, who wandered in foreign lands and faced annihilation decree, this time by Hitler.
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The Haggadah covers the entire period of the Israelites in Egypt, their redemption from slavery and it delves into predicting the nation of Israel"s future.
One page in the Haggadah its words are somewhat apropos the year 2021.
We read together: We began the Seder as slaves in Egypt, tasting salty tears. Then, we raced through the desert sand and ate matzah baked in a hurry. We passed through the Sea or Reeds and escaped from Pharaoh"s army. We praised God for helping us escape and for saving our lives.
Now our job at the Seder of remembering, telling and re-living this astonishing journey to freedom has been completed.
Moving from the past to the future we ask: "how will I grow this year?"; "how will the world change?"; "how can we keep moving from slavery to freedom?" (We are now on a course to lose our freedom to modern Pharaohs).
The Haggadah ends with the Jewish people"s great hope for the future: "Next Year in Jerusalem", when Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people is the symbol of the Jewish people"s eternity.
Fast forward to 1943
Emanuel Ringelblum was a Polish-Jewish historian, a politician and social worker, known for his Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto, called Ringelblum's Archives of the Warsaw Ghetto. Oyneg Shabbos was a code name for a documentary group in Warsaw Ghetto, led by Ringelblum, during 1939 to 1942 Nazi-Germany occupation of Warsaw.
Emanuel Ringelblum arrived in Warsaw from Galicia in 1919; in 1940, 45,000 Warsaw Jews were forced to be confined in a small section of Warsaw called "the Jewish Ghetto". Ringelblum documented life in Ghetto Warsaw. The attesting documents, buried for the world to know, were found under a destroyed Ghetto building as the Nazis liquidated the Ghetto.
On Sunday, April 18, the eve of Passover 1943, the last battle of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish uprising against the Nazis, led by Mordechai Anielewicz, took place.
Nowadays, countless Jews take for granted the good life they are afforded.
In the "Life in Ghetto Warsaw" documentation, as they fought their battle with their only weapons, words, hoping to win in the far-off future, Ringelblum wrote:
"What we were unable to cry and shriek out to the world we buried in the ground. So the world may know it all. We would [have been] the fathers, the teachers and educators of the future. But no, we shall certainly not live to see [the recovery of this archive]. And so I write my last will. May this historical treasure fall into good hands, may it last into better times, and may it alarm and alert the world to what happened in the twentieth century. We may now die in peace. We fulfilled our mission. May history attest for us."
The Nazis meant to destroy the entire Jewish people, stopped at 6 million Jews they murdered. The Holocaust ended 76 years; only now the counted Jews before Hitler"s sword began scything them down has been reached.
Seeing the horrors around him Ringelblum could only hope to win "in the far-off future."
We, Jews, exist because of those heroes who, in the not-so-distant past, chose to perish heroically. We are those heroes" who hope to win in the far-off future.
The story of Exodus has similarities to Ringelblum's Ghetto Warsaw uprising ending hope. The Israelite-Jews escaped Pharaoh"s annihilation decree and hoped to enter their promised homeland in the near or not so far-off future.
Present time or the near or not-so-far-off future must not be taken for granted.
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