V’hi she’amda la'voteinu v’lanu-And this has stood for our ancestors and us
V’hi, this part of the seder you have probably said or sung almost hundreds of times at this point in your life. But have you ever thought about that “v’hi?” The “this” is sort of ambiguous. Is it about that which preceded this section or is it about what follows? If it’s about God, with it being in the feminine, is the haggadah tapping into the mystical notion of God’s divine feminine presence? Either way you split it, the notion of the expression remains. No matter where you find yourself in Jewish history, enemies always stand at the ready.
That can affect us in myriad ways. It can push us to respond aggressively to the world around us. It can force us to live in a mindset of scarcity, pushing others away. Or, it can also push us toward love and kindness. It goes without saying that there are a plethora of options in between both of those.
This past weekend was a scary one for the Jewish people as Iran sent a salvo of missiles toward Israel. We all waited with baited breath to see what would happen. Thankfully, for now, Israel and her allies repelled this attack.
At almost the exact same time, I, along with two colleagues, and our teen community were coming out of a deeply meaningful Shabbat experience in Arizona. We had just completed our third day of learning about the immigration experience in America. The trip was full of many memorable moments but none had as great an impact as hearing from one of our educators, Eddie Chavez Calderon who works in the local Jewish community.
Although we had been with Eddie since the trip started, none of us realized that Eddie himself had migrated to the United States from Mexico in 1999, slung across his mother’s back, traversing incredibly dangerous terrain to reach this side of the border. He himself was not aware of his own background until his teenage years. Once he found out, it threw him, so much so that he ran away from home unsure of where to turn.
As he found refuge in a bathroom on the road, the only person who called him to reach out was a teacher from his high school, with whom he had developed a close connection over the years. She shadowed him in school and now came to him in his darkest moments. When Eddie asked her why she was so insistent on keeping tabs on him, she replied simply, “it’s because I am Jewish.” That was enough for Eddie to dive into learning about Judaism, eventually convert, and end up as one of the premier Jewish educators of our time.
Eddie faced a lot of enemies as an undocumented immigrant who then was accepted into the DACA program. He could’ve shunned the world and any help but he didn’t because of this Jewish teacher who changed the trajectory of his life.
That gets us back to that “v’hi.” Rabbi Yaakov Lorberbaum, a Ukrainian Rabbi in the 18th/19th century known as the Ba’al Netivot wrote in his Passover commentary Maaseh Nissim the following:
This is an explanation of the expression in the previous passage, “Blessed is God.” We bless God not only because God made a promise to us, but because God actively takes an interest in its fulfillment. This is what has sustained us from generation to generation. Even when others rose to destroy us, they could not destroy our sense of hope, which was a direct product of God’s interest in us. And even in exile, when we were seemingly cut off from God, that sense of hope sustained us in the face of overwhelming odds.
The enemies, on a global, communal, or personal level are always there but so is hope. It can take many forms because hope is the everlasting fulfillment of God’s promise. Whatever you believe theologically, we all can believe in the power of hope. Maybe behind the fear of those rockets, you felt a small amount of it. Certainly, that’s what Eddie felt in that bathroom. Thousands of years ago when an ancient band of slaves rose up against their overseers, a little kernel of that hope blossomed into everyone one of us. Our opportunity is to now spread it to others.
Shabbat Shalom, Happy Weekend, and I hope your Passover is joyous, redemptive, and certainly full of hope!
Adir
Strong, rabbi.