Pesach Yizkor 2000

Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg,
Beth Tfiloh Congregation, Baltimore, MD

For hundred upon hundreds of years it made no difference where Jews lived, they all would use the same Haggadah! The word of God as given down to Maxwell House Coffee! Truth to tell, there were hundreds of different editions of the Haggadah that were drawn and published over the centuries. But the text was the same, and with some variations, the tunes were the same as well.

But times have changed, and in recent years the Haggadah has changed as well. Now there's one to meet each individual's needs. There's a gay Haggadah, a cyberspace Haggadah, a feminist Haggadah, a Christian Haggadah, a vegetarian Haggadah, and a Buddhist Haggadah. And even for those who may not go to these extremes, the truth of the matter is, in many American Jewish homes, the words and tunes to age-old songs from the Haggadah -- like V'hi Sh'amda and B'tzeit Yisroel and Adir Hu -- are all lost and forgotten. Whether it be because of intermarriage or assimilation or illiteracy, many can't read the Hebrew, much less sing it. So in more and more American Jewish homes, you find new songs at the Seder.

How about starting your Seder with something like this: "There's no Seder like our Seder," sung to the tune of "There's No Business Like Show Business!" When it's time for the Afikomen, you get the chance to sing, "Don't Sit on the Afikomen" to the tune of "Glory, Glory Hallelujah!" And for the coming of Elijah, a song to the tune of "Maria" from West Side Story. And to wrap it all up in a nice mellow mood, no longer is it necessary to sing, "L'shana Hadahah B'yerushalim," "Next year in Jerusalem." No, now you can sing "Same Time Next Year!" to the tune of "Making Whoopee!"

These are the new songs found at many American Sedorim -- ring out the old and sing in the new! And yet, I'm pretty sure that there's one song -- one "oldie but goodie" -- that has remained intact. There's one song found in the Haggadah that no matter how distant a Jew may have moved from his religious moorings, the song plays on. Everyone knows this song, perhaps because it has such a peppy melody or because it has such a simple refrain. It's become so popular that it is no longer restricted to the Pesach Seder. You might hear it at a wedding or Bar Mitzvah reception, or even in the elevator! The song whose refrain has one word: Dayenu! For whatever reason, Dayenu is known and loved and looked forward to by all of us -- straights and gays, vegetarians and chazor fressers. Next to Hava Negilah, we Jews have made Dayenu our most popular song.

But I think it's important for all of us to understand that Dayenu is more than just a catchy melody, more than just a children's song. Dayenu contains a point of view on life that is either absurd or profound, and which either way is so different from the way that we usually look at life, that it is worth our thinking about.

Listen to what we proclaim to God in the words of Dayenu: "If you had just taken us out of Egypt and not led us safely through the desert -- Dayenu -- it would have been enough for us." Would that really have been enough? "If you had just led us through the desert and not brought us to Mt. Sinai, it would have been enough." "If you had given us the Shabbat and not given us the Torah, it would have been enough." Is this true? If God had not given us the Torah, or if God had not brought us to the Land of Israel, or if God had not given us the Shabbos, would that really have been enough? If God had started the task of making us His people, and then left us in the middle, would that really have been enough? It would have been like a man who was stuck in the bottom of a well and someone comes and throws him a rope and lifts him halfway up but then says, "Ok, now you're on your own!" Does that make sense?

And yet I think it does! What Dayenu is saying is: if God gives you half a favor, don't knock it! If God does part of a good deed for you, that's no small thing. Don't be like those who say, "If He gives me everything I want and need, then I will be grateful. But if He starts on the way and gets me part way there, then I'll complain and feel frustrated and angry." What I'm trying to suggest to you very simply is that Dayenu tries to teach us to be grateful for partial favors, because partial favors are as much as any of us ever get in this life. You have to be grateful for what you get and not be warped by what you don't.

I think this message takes on heightened meaning for us this Pesach as we still continue to reflect on the historic visit to Israel by Pope John Paul II last month. Let us reflect on who this man is. Perhaps it was best expressed in these words from The Jerusalem Report: "No individual has done more to foster reconciliation between Christians and Jews than this Polish Pope. He is the first Pontiff to speak about the right of the Jews to return to their land, the first to describe anti-Semitism as a sin against God, the first to explicitly insist on the enduring validity of God's covenant with the Jewish people, the first to visit a synagogue, the first to describe the Jewish people as Christianity's 'elder brother,' the first to bring Holocaust commemoration to the Vatican, the first to routinely incorporate meeting with Jewish leaders in his pilgrimages around the world." The first to instruct the Vatican to establish diplomatic relations with the state of Israel, overriding protests from Vatican diplomats who feared an anti-Christian backlash in the Muslim world. Dayenu? Is that not enough?

Not for some Jews! No matter what the Pope says or does, it's not enough because they continue to focus on what he hasn't said or what he hasn't done, while being unable to appreciate what he has. Both here in America and in Israel some Jews continue to harp on those issues that divide us -- Edith Stein, Pope Pius, Kurt Waldheim. Some Jews even complained that during the Pope's visit, his Mass caused some Sabbath desecration. Are we going to be blind to what this man did during his visit? The previous Pope who visited Israel refused to refer to Israel by name. He refused to meet with the chief rabbis or other dignitaries. This Pope comes, meets with the Prime Minister, with the President, with the chief rabbi, and visits Yad Vashem. And who will ever forget the picture of this man with a crucifix dangling from his neck visiting the Western Wall and putting a "kvitel" into the crevices between the stones as Jews have done for centuries? It was one of the most incredible pictures I've seen during the course of my entire lifetime! And then to read the message he wrote on that "kvitel" expressing profound sorrow over Christian's past persecution of Jews, and addressing it to the "God of our fathers." "We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer and asking you for forgiveness. We wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the covenant." Dayenu? Is that not enough?

No, not for some Jews who complained that he shouldn't have worn a crucifix at the Wall. Are they aware of the fact that the Pope is not Jewish? Do they realize what his visit to the Wall -- the last remnant of our temple -- really meant? Are they aware of what his visit to Israel said? The simple truth is that the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was a body blow to Christian theology. The Jews were not supposed to be there. The script called for them to be scattered and persecuted until the end of time, to suffer until they accepted Jesus. But we had the audacity to re-write the script and last month, right before our very eyes, the Prince of the Catholic church showed that he accepted it. It couldn't be easy. When you remember the words that Popes have used to describe the Jewish people down through the ages . . . couldn't have been easy for Pope John Paul to refer to us as "elder brothers in the faith." He first said this on a Good Friday, the same day which for centuries had Catholics reciting in their churches "a prayer for the conversion of the perfidious Jews." And now you have a Pope saying, "It must be understood that Jews who for 2000 years were dispersed among the nations of the world, had decided to return to the land of their ancestors. This is their right." Dayenu? Is that not enough?

No, not for some Jews. Not for those who criticize the Pope for not apologizing for the Holocaust and denouncing Pope Pius's silence during the war. And well do I know that the church was guilty of much that took place during the Holocaust, but I also know that one infallible Pope does not get up and say that another infallible Pope was wrong. And I also know that a Pope who is the leader of a church does not get up and criticize a church which Catholic theology teaches is composed of the body of Jesus. Popes just don't do that! But let me tell you what this Pope did do! It took place during his visit to Yad Vashem when he came face to face with Edith Tzirer, a Holocaust survivor. This is her story. It was in a small town near Cracow Poland in 1945 -- Liberation Day. Mrs. Tzirer was fourteen then, painfully thin with tuberculosis, and all alone. She had just been released from a labor camp. Wearing her camp uniform, she was riding a train to Cracow, where she had lost contact with her family at the beginning of the war in 1939. The train ran out of fuel and stopped in a small town. While the other passengers ate and drank, Mrs. Tzirer sat off in a corner. "I don't know to this day how he saw me," she said. "He moved some people aside and came to me and asked me why I was sitting there like that." "Did you eat? Did you drink?" he asked. "I said I hadn't in a number of days. He went and brought me my first cup of tea, the first cup in three years. He was a seminary student," she said, "young, tall and handsome with blue eyes." "To tell you the truth," she said, "I thought it was God himself who had showed up."

Mrs. Tzirer said the man told her to come with him and board another train, a cattle car, bound for Cracow. She told him she was too weak to walk. "He picked me up. He took me on his back and carried me. We walked for three, four kilometers -- I'm not sure -- through the snow." The man told her that his name was Karol Wojtyla and that he was from the town of Wadowice.

Now he was Pope John Paul II, and she had waited fifty-four years to thank him in person for saving her life. Last month when she came face to face with him at Yad Vashem, she broke down and cried. She could only get one sentence out of her throat. It's a sentence from the Talmud: "Kol hamikaim nefesh achas b'yisroel . . . k'ilu kiyaim olam molay -- He who saves one life in Israel is as if he saved an entire world." Dayenu? Not for some Jews. I'm beginning to think that for these people, if the Pope decided to convert to Judaism and became a Belzer Chasid and went and spit on the grave of Pope Pius, these people would say: Too little, too late!

The fact of the matter is, these Jews are reacting just the way their ancestors did on this day 3300 years ago. You see, we celebrate Peasch for a week. Biblically it's a seven-day festival. In the Diaspora we add on an eighth day. If Pesach is simply commemorating the exodus from Egypt, why the need for a week? That happened on the first day. One day would have been enough. But you see, the last days of Pesach commemorate another historic event. After the Jews left Egypt, they traveled for a week. Then they came to that awesome moment and event in time. The Egyptian army behind them in pursuit, the swirling waters of the Red Sea in front of them ready to envelop them. And, lo and behold, what happened? You saw it in the movie! The waters parted! "V'hamayim lahem chomah -- the waters parted and became like a wall," allowing the Jewish people to walk through to safety. Can you just imagine how the Jews must have felt when they saw this unfold before their every eyes? Our rabbis in the Talmud cannot contain themselves in the words they use to describe the awesomeness of this event, going as far as to tell us: "Roaso chifcho al ha-yam mah shelo raoh Yechezkiel b'nvuoso -- a simple handmaiden saw wonders at the Red Sea that the prophet Ezekiel never could have even imagined in his prophecies." It was unbelievable! And you know what? You know what our rabbis tell us the Jews did as they walked through the parted waters? They complained. That's right! They complained! What was the complaint? They complained that the sea bed was muddy. In the words of the rabbis at the Red Sea, one Jew said to the other, "B'Mitzraym b'chomer u'blavanim u'vyam chomer mayim rabim -- in Egypt we had mud and bricks and now more mud." While one of the truly great wonders and miracles of history unfolded, the Jews complained! They weren't satisfied. Enough was never enough.

Perhaps it was those Jews who complained who were the authors of a Haggadah that was just recently discovered. It's considered to be the oldest Haggadah ever written. It was found in the wilderness somewhere between Egypt and the Promised Land, and it is called, "The Kvetcher's Haggadah." Let me read you just one page from this Haggadah: "If He had just brought us out of Egypt, and not made us shlep all of their wealth . . . that would have been bad enough. If He had made us shlep all their wealth, and had not frightened us half to death at the Red Sea . . . before the water finally split . . . that would have been bad enough. If He had frightened us half to death at the Red Sea . . . and not made us shlep through the desert for forty years, that would have been bad enough. If He had made us shlep through the desert for forty years and not made us eat the manna, which tasted like cardboard . . . that would have been bad enough."

Yes, that's the way some Jews felt then; that's the way some Jews feel today. And it's not just in terms of a Pope. It's in terms of life itself where this really becomes problematic, for each of us is involved in a desperate search for the key to happiness and contentment. Every one of us is burdened with problems, anxieties, tensions and dissatisfaction. How many amongst us can truthfully say, "I'm absolutely happy, perfectly content." No, like the Jews after the Red Sea, we all come to recognize that in life's journey one problem is solved only to have another arise. There's always a new obstacle lying in the way: concerns about our children, our jobs, our health, our age . . . How desperately we need to find the ability to say "dayenu" for what we do have now, for the good that does exist in our lives. And yet, for so many it's so hard to say. How often do we say, "If only I could buy a larger home, I would be so happy!" "If only I had three cars!" "If only I could join the country club!" "If only our children were more successful." "If only I had a better job!" "If only I could earn the respect of the community!" "If only I had time for more leisure!" "If only, if only . . . I would be so happy and never again complain about anything." But when our hopes have been realized, how soon we forget all these yearnings and how swiftly we again become discontented! If only we knew how to say dayenu!

Is it not true that much of the unhappiness found in married life today is due to the inability of husband and wife to say dayenu once in a while? We've become so expert at being critical at what our spouses don't do for us that we've forgotten the importance of expressing our gratitude for what they do do for us! If we are only going to say dayenu when our mates are perfect, then we're never going to say it!

There's a famous debate in the Talmud between the school of Shamai and the school of Hillel over what are considered appropriate grounds for divorce. The school of Shamai says only marital infidelity is reason for a "get." The school of Hillel disagrees. The school of Hillel says: If your wife overcooks your dinner, that, too, is grounds for a "get." Now generally speaking, the school of Hillel was known to be the more moderate, the more sensitive one. How come they seem so harsh in this case? My father, of blessed memory, used to explain that they weren't being harsh. They were being sensitive to the wife. If you have a husband for whom you do so much, and all he can do is complain that the meat is too well done . . . get rid of him! Who wants to live with someone like that! Better a little dayenu! Instead of burtching about what's wrong. A little recognition of what's right.

Parents and children set such unreasonable expectations for each other. I sometimes think that the waiting rooms of psychiatrists are filled with people who never learned to say dayenu for what their parents did for them. So many are bitter and crushed by the wrongs their parents did them, never once being able to appreciate all that was right that their parents brought into their lives.

And how difficult it is for parents to say dayenu! Instead of rearing well-adjusted, fulfilled, self-confident young people, how many emotional hang-ups we pass on when we throw up to them idealized goals, always comparing them and pushing them; never being content with who they are and what they are. Never stopping to say to God: Dayenu -- I'm satisfied.

And, my friends, this represents the greatest challenge for us at Yizkor time. As we pause to remember our dear ones who have been taken from us, what in fact do we remember? So many have endured the anguish of final parting from a loved one. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives have tasted the bitterness of bereavement. They are now left with a choice of memories. They can either languish in pining as they dwell upon the death of their dear one, or they can find inspiration and ennoblement as they contemplate the life of their beloved. They can either become bent under the burden of grief, or be braced by a sense of gratitude.

How many choose to remember the death and not the life. Instead of saying, "God, I thank you for letting us have him or her for as long as we did," we hear: "God if only I had him for one more day," "God, if only he could have lived until his grandson's Bar Mitzvah," "God, if he only could have lived to the wedding to walk his daughter down the aisle," "God, if only he could have lived until his grandson's graduation from medical school."

Jewish tradition takes us by the shirt collars and shakes us and tells us to "look at what you had and what you have." Count those blessings. The evenings you spent together, the kisses, the hugs, the phone calls of concern, the touches, the family picnics, the trips, the jokes, the smiles, the tears of concern.

I recently paid a shiva call to someone who suffered the loss of a loved one. In the course of the conversation, I asked her what she was feeling. She said, "At first I was angry. After all, he was so young. Why did he have to go so soon? And then I said to myself, at least we had him for nearly sixty years. That's something, isn't it? I should be grateful for that, shouldn't I?"

I was very touched by what she said, for she may not have been a fancy theologian or philosopher, but what she said was true, wasn't it? If you become angry, what good does that do? And if you become warped by hatred, who do you hurt besides yourself? But if you are able to say, "His death may not have had dignity, but I'm going to maintain mine. I didn't have him for as long as I would have liked -- not nearly as long as I would have liked -- but I'm grateful for the years that I did have him. I'm grateful for the partial favor I received." If you are able to say dayenu when you have to and not let the partial favors that you get become spoiled by the fact that they are not total favors, then you are a wise person.

So yes, let there be tears at this Yizkor service, but let them be the tears of joy in remembering the past Seders, past Bar Mitzvahs, weddings and bris. Let them not be the tears of guilt. "Rabbi, why wasn't I there when he needed me?" Let them not be remembered with harsh words or phone calls that should have been made. Let us remember the love, not the loss. The life, not the death. Let us be grateful for what was given to us, and not bitter for what was taken from us.

Let us learn to say dayenu -- thank you, God, for having brought such a marvelous, loving human being into our lives. For the years which they were granted, as brief as they might have seemed, and for the privilege of having shared those years. Dayenu -- we offer our eternal gratitude.

For such a Yizkor, such an outlook on life and death enables us to stand before our Creator, stand before our world and stand before ourselves, being able to confront all that comes into our lives, proclaiming the immortal words of our faith: Yisgadal v'yaskadash sh'may rabbah -- glorified and sanctified be the name of God." Amen.

© copyright 2000 by Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg. All rights reserved.

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