Demonstrations across the country calling for the early elections/Alon Banki, Bnei Meshi, Eilat Markowitz, Yotam Ronen, Erez Harel
Each generation understands its holidays differently. The contents and meanings change with the times, and it is difficult to determine what commemorates a holiday in the canon and what sends a date to the abyss of femininity. Some holidays die of their own accord and are forgotten, and others remain forever despite the changes of times.
Who today remembers the "Day of Nicanor", and where did his right hand and head disappear, which were cut off by Judah the Maccabee in Beit Huron and displayed in the streets of Jerusalem? Few, if any, are aware of the 17th of Marchashvan today, the beginning of Lent in a year when no more rains fell. And the dozens of days of confession and salvation that were celebrated in the Diaspora of Israel and called "Purim Shani" have long been forgotten. Compared to those that have disappeared - the 15th of Shebat is born anew. The holiday that was marginal, a halakhic, purely formal, Day of Zion, has become a real holiday in the new Israeli era - and like Hanukkah, which has changed its face and turned from a historical holiday of religious salvation, a trial, into a national Zionist holiday of heroism and proud nationalism at this time.
And Passover? Seemingly the eternal of all holidays. Still, it seems that he is the next candidate for a dramatic change in meaning. In the simplest basic sense, Passover is our original Independence Day - the holiday that marks Israel's existential change from a gathering of tribes to a constitutional nation, from a slave nation to a sovereign nation. The Seder night and the Haggadah are the preservation instruments of the holiday. The Haggadah was designed as a defensive and defiant element against the reality of the constant enslavement of the Jewish people. Its beginning as a saying compared to the Christians of the days of the Second Temple; Your "Last Supper" compared to our Passover Supper, your Christ's redemption which was compared to ours which is yet to come. And from then on Passover and its Haggadah were the bearers of our collective identity, hope and redemption. Our ancestors the slaves against Pharaoh, sages of the Second Temple against the Roman enslavers from here and the Christian opponents from there, the martyrs in Spain against their inquisitors and so in most of Jewish history, the past as a shaper and explainer of the present. Forever in the reality of the absence of sovereignty, always surrounded by existential fears and concerns, when Passover symbolizes Both the depth of slavery and the heights of hope.
In such a natural way, even if a little childish, the Passover and its contents were imbued to the point of saturation with a defensive spirituality, with an imagined aggression that replaces real power. Ten plagues of Egypt swell in this midnight to include hundreds of plagues. Just to feel for a moment the illusion of the strength of the force. To feel the exaltation associated with full control over destiny, without fearing the whims and whims of an enemy and enemy. We open the door before "pour out your wrath" with much commotion. In truth, this is an expression of fear that seeks to check that none of the deaf policemen of the local pharaoh are lurking beyond it. On the symbolic side, this is an opening that tries to pretend for a moment to be fearless against every enemy and lurker. Passover was a sign of an answer to the question of how to preserve national hopes in the eras of destruction, loss of independence and exile.
Of course, the question arises: what is the meaning of such a celebration, in a generation that declared itself redeemed, that "the iron of its fetters was removed from it", that stood between it and the "absolute victory". In a generation that until recently was not afraid to open the door and get out of it to whatever it wanted, it was fitting that the future of the Passover we are familiar with should fade away and disappear, like that Nicanor Day. Then came last October, and with it new-old experiences. Altnoy. On the one hand, all the syndromes of "we are standing up to our brides" returned at once - and powerfully -. On the other hand, we discovered once again that the Holy One, blessed be He, does not come to parties and wars, nor "rescue us from them". From the third side, the Americans save us again and again and not the whole world against us.
And from the fourth side, we became Egyptians. A mighty regional power, which spares no means to bite, run amok, abuse and starve the enslaved of Palestine. With the very same reasons: "Let us beware of him lest he multiply, and it was because there was a war, and he was also against us, and we fought against him, and he went up from the land." And hence the permission we took upon ourselves to renew the primordial evil, "in order to answer it with their suffering".
So which Passover will we celebrate this year? We will not have one Passover. Many of us and I among them will celebrate with sadness, cry this night for the abductees in captivity and pray for their freedom, their return and their peace. Others, especially the pharaohs in the palaces of Balfour and Caesarea, will continue to weigh down their hearts, because this night is no different for them than any other night of hedonism.
Is there another way? A fusion of contents, which will do to Passover what modernity did to Hanukkah and Tu B'Shvat? Is it possible for Passover to have meaning for the modern man, the Redeemer? For this we need to understand that exodus from Egypt differently. Not a simplistic national conflict and the escape of slaves from among the masters, but a fundamental conflict Among the views of the world, the victory of human rights over the lust for conquest and domination, which is inherent in every power relationship, would not have been possible if it had not been for the capture of freedom by five brave women: Yochabed, who changed Pharaoh's order of destruction; The midwives who helped her; the sister of Moses, who stood on the side of the biblical nurse; and they were the first to understand the deep pulse of the heart of the issue and they said to themselves: if Pharaoh - a tyrant, Egyptian, man - will continue to be absolute in his abilities, so we will not exist. Only if the pharaoh is limited, and his absolute tyranny will break into pieces, the freedom of one will be limited by the absoluteness of the other, especially if it is about the relationship of the individual and the government of "making room", of dialogue and the inclusion of the opposite and the freedom of human dignity and the respect of others. Without it we would not have been redeemed from Egypt, and without it the world would not have been corrected from Egyptianism - slavery, discrimination and hatred - which still resides in us in all other areas of our lives.
The writer served as chairman of the Knesset and chairman of the Jewish Agency