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[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E415]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RABBI ZOBERMAN'S REFLECTIONS ON PASSOVER
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HON. ELAINE G. LURIA
of virginia
in the house of representatives
Friday, May 1, 2020
Mrs. LURIA. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record, at the request of
a Virginia Beach constituent, Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman, of Temple Lev
Tikvah and is a reflection of his views:
``At the heart of the Passover Seder is the haunting
probing of `Ma Nishtana . . . How different is this night
from all other nights?' This historical Rabbinic quest is
designed to grasp Passover's meaning throughout the
generational chain in the context of changing and always
challenging times. It is traditionally sung by the youngest
attending child, to mitigate the seriousness of the inquiry
surrounding the complex poles of enslavement and freedom in
the Jewish consciousness as well as human experience. Surely
at this beclouded Passover Festival, the plague of the
Coronavirus is casting ominous darkness not only on one
people as with the punitive Ten Plagues upon Pharaoh's Egypt
for freedom's sake and slavery's denouncement. Pharaoh was
forewarned time and again to let Moses' people go. Now we
face a global attack by a stealthy adversary exposing the
entire interdependent human family to the Angel of Death's
whims. All that in the midst of a complacent post-modern high
technology society. We are tempted by the hubris of false
invincibility, plunging us to a debilitating sense of
primeval vulnerability, threatening our accustomed and
enviable American way of life and its underlying essential
democracy.
Ultimately the Passover celebration is a poignant reminder
that enslavement in its destructive variety--physically,
spiritually and psychologically--is bound to be overcome by
the light of deliverance, replacing virus with virtue, pain
with promise and violence with vision.
At this season's Seder table, those who are fortunate to
safely conduct it, should diminish from the cup of joyful
salvation in addition to the ten drops for the ten plagues
upon ancient Egypt for the sin of Hebrew enslavement, one
drop for the current heavy human loses and intense suffering.
The inspiring Exodus journey from servitude to an oppressor
to service of The Most High, became a model of liberation for
the human family, culminating in the Messianic vision of a
world transformed.
We have chosen to convert the bitter herbs of our exile
into the sweet charoset of homecoming for all. It is the
symbolic hovering presence at the Seder table of the prophet
Elijah for whom we open the door and set aside a special cup
of wine, which provides for the eternal flame of universal
shalom's healing, hope and harmony. It is the peace we have
kept alive as a flickering light in history's darkness.
Passover's promise by a compassionate heritage is
ultimately rooted in its revolutionary view of the infinite
worth of each of the Creator's children, recalling that God
silenced the heavenly angels when jubilant at the drowning of
Pharaoh's troops. Passover's soaring spirit of renewal of a
people as well as an individual, also applies to the natural
order of springtime's reassuring return with the beauty of
the Earth's budding and recovery that we are pledged to
forever secure.''
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