Let all who are hungry come and eat
Rabbi Vicki L. Axe
Spiritual Leader of Congregation Shir Ami in Greenwich
www.congregationshirami.org
Appeared in the Greenwich Time 3.20.10
“Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are needy, come and celebrate.” These are the words Jews all over the world will recite when we gather in our homes to eat the festive meal and recall the Exodus from Egypt at our Passover Seders. The text is not in Hebrew like most of the prayers of the Passover Seder. It is in Aramaic, the street language of ancient times, designed to be heard and understood by all who needed a place of refuge during the Festival of Passover.
When I was young my family took this idea to mean that we should invite friends to our Seder who might not otherwise have a Seder, especially our non-Jewish friends with whom we loved to share our favorite holiday celebration. Even though the celebration took place at home, we dressed in our finest clothes, and set the festive meal in our formal dining room with our best china. Our Seder was full of all the delicious traditional foods, lovingly prepared for days by my mother, with all of the prayers and stories recited in three-part harmony created by my two older sisters and me. We delighted in the moments especially designed to hold the attention of the younger members of the family.
In recent years I have come to understand the more global ramifications of this injunction to “Let all who are hungry come and eat. Let all who are in need come and celebrate.” As Jews, we have a collective memory that brings us together to recall and reflect on defining moments in our history and to pass this collective memory on to our children. On Passover we remember the Exodus from Egypt when we were redeemed from slavery and stood on freedom’s shores at the Red Sea. At our Passover Seder we eat bitter herbs and drink sweet wine to recall and teach our children that in this defining moment we came to know and understand the bitter taste of slavery and the sweet taste of freedom.
This memory compels us to reach out with compassion and take action again and again on behalf of all people who are oppressed as we were oppressed at the hands of Pharaoh, to “let all who are hungry come and eat, let all who are in need come and celebrate.” With the annual reminder of our years in Egyptian bondage, we have always been at the front lines helping those confronting any form of human suffering, whether it was the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s or the victims of the recent hurricane in Haiti.
With Passover coming just two weeks after the devastating winter storm of 2010, the notion of inviting people in need into our homes has taken on new meaning. We lost power in our home at about 3:00pm Saturday, the day of the storm. Like so many others in the area, we had no electricity, no heat, no water, no internet, none of our usual comforts. We were trapped in our home with trees and power lines lying across the road in all directions. By Sunday, the road was cleared in one direction and we were able leave home by taking a long circuitous route to avoid fallen trees and wires throughout our neighborhood.
After three days bundled in layers of clothing and blankets, we decided to move to a hotel. Like so many in our situation we learned that all hotels in Fairfield and Westchester Counties were booked to capacity. That is when I learned from my own personal experience and from the stories of friends and neighbors how kind and generous all people are in “letting all who are hungry come and eat, letting all who are in need come and celebrate.”
Strangers were helping strangers. Neighbors who barely knew each other were suddenly having “sleep-overs” in the one home on their street that had power, sharing food and fun. Working parents were taking turns caring for each other’s children during the week of school closings. Office buildings and houses of worship were opening their doors overnight to house the many families that that had no heat or water at home.
I pray that this year, when we get up from our Seder tables full from holiday food, full from the joy of gathering with family and friends to remember the Exodus from Egypt, we will carry the theme of caring for those who are hungry and poor into our everyday lives. I pray that the spirit of the winter storm of 2010, coming just two weeks before that Festival of Passover, will continue to inspire all people to care for the needy, to reach out to our neighbors, to offer sustenance and celebration to all.
The Power of Forgiveness
Rabbi Vicki L. Axe
Spiritual Leader of Congregation Shir Ami in Greenwich
www.congregationshirami.org
Appeared in the Greenwich Time 8.29.09
“I forgive you.” Three of the most powerful words in the English language. And perhaps three of the most difficult to utter. The sacred command to seek forgiveness and to forgive is the ultimate task of the Jewish New Year Season. The ten days beginning with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and ending with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, are known as the Ten Days of Repentance. With heads bowed in contrition, we gather every year to recite communal and personal litanies of confession and forgiveness. We pray that God, arbiter and judge, will respond to the sincerity and humility of our words with love and compassion.
The Divine injunction to confess our sins is clear, and the holy instruction to atone for our sins is clear. These prayers are even recited daily for the month leading up to the New Year and on Yom Kippur we recite these prayers not once, but five times. We ask God for forgiveness, and we ask one another for forgiveness, reciting in unison “For transgressions against God, the Day of Atonement atones, but for transgressions of one human being against another, the Day of Atonement does not atone until they have made peace with one another.”
The text that follows is equally, if not more compelling: “I hereby forgive all who have hurt me, all who have wronged me, whether deliberately or inadvertently, whether by word or by deed. May no one be punished on my account.” So it is not enough to confess and repent in our hearts. We are commanded to seek forgiveness from God and from those whom we have hurt or wronged. And we are commanded to grant forgiveness, to forgive those who have hurt us, to forgive ourselves.
We are living in an era of distrust, distrust for everything and everyone. We profile people on first glance before we ever take the time to find out who they are. I am reminded of the movie Babel. In one film we are witness to a vacationing couple viewed as ugly Americans, peaceful Moroccan shepherds assumed to be terrorists, a hardworking Asian businessman surveyed as an arms dealer, a loving Mexican housekeeper accused of kidnapping the very children she cares for, a deaf teenager struggling with acceptance among her classmates. All are victims of profiling.
We all do it. I was pregnant with my oldest son, Judah, waiting for a subway in New York, alone on the platform, when two Black men appeared. I just wanted to disappear as I feared for my life and the life of my unborn son. They started walking towards me and actually came into my space. And when they were almost in my face, they looked me right in the eye and said “So what do you think it’s gonna be – a boy or a girl?” I felt immediately relieved and very ashamed. This was in 1978 before we knew the word profiling, but that is exactly what I did. I would love to find those two gentlemen now and seek forgiveness. I guess the best I can do is to forgive myself.
We’ve become an angry, unforgiving society. People across political lines are unable to forgive the opposing side for differing points of view. People across cultural lines are unable to forgive each other for differing ways of life. People across lines of ideology are unable to seek reconciliation through diplomacy and dialogue. Forgiveness is a very powerful weapon when it is used as an overture to dialogue to find common ground.
I suggest that as the Jewish community prepares for the Ten Days of Repentance, the world community can follow our lead to reach across lines of misunderstanding and hurt and anger. The Rev. Noel McInnis is vice-president of the Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance, a non-denominational educational foundation born out of that fateful day on 9/11 when our lives were changed forever. Dedicated to evoking the healing power of forgiveness worldwide, he suggests that “Since nothing can be forgiven for us that is not first forgiven by and through us, there is only one species of forgiveness: self forgiveness.” And once we forgive ourselves for being who we are, we can turn to those around us and offer forgiveness. We can turn to the world and offer forgiveness. We can say, “I forgive you.” Three of the most powerful words in the English language. And perhaps three of the most difficult to utter. It will be the most healing, liberating act we can ever perform. It will transform us.