Searching for meaning in a post-October 7 Pesach (Dated April 16, 2024)

Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein

Pesach is our moment to discover meaning in the utter bewilderment and shock that we as Jews have experienced since October 7. The barbaric attacks themselves. The Iranian bombardment. The massive surge in global antisemitism. Israel’s ongoing demonization.

The global obsession with the Jewish state. None of it makes rational sense. The very existence of the Jewish people is a mystery – we’re the only nation in recorded history to have survived mass exile, been scattered to every corner of the globe, and then regrouped and returned to their ancestral homeland. The clue to solving these mysteries is a single astounding fact: it was all predicted. Everything we have witnessed in Jewish history – even as it defied all conventional laws of history – was actually foretold to us thousands of years before it happened.

When we try to impose a rational explanation on our history – and on current events, October 7 and its aftermath – we get stuck. Because there is no rational explanation. Only a supernatural one. Foretold to Abraham, recorded in the Torah, imparted by our Prophets – and discussed at our seders for centuries.

We all know the famous words of vehi sheamda in the Haggadah: “Not only one arose to destroy us, but in every generation they rise up to destroy us – and the Holy One Blessed Be He saves us from their hands.” The message of the seder, and of vehi sheamda in particular, is that we are a miraculous people, born in Egyptian slavery and then liberated – amidst great miracles, signs and wonders – by God, Himself.

Any attempt to process Jewish history and Jewish destiny through the normal laws of history and politics leads to nowhere. The Divine framework as set out in the Torah is the only way to make sense of our supernatural history.

Within the texts of our Torah, we will find all the answers we seek. We’ll understand the Divine meaning and purpose of Jewish identity, the essence of antisemitism, the terrible pain and miraculous triumphs of our remarkable history and our even more remarkable destiny. At our seder tables we remind ourselves, like all the Jews who came before us, that our history isn’t haphazard. That there is a Divine plan.

That the pain and the redemption, the suffering and the miracles, the persecution and the liberation, are bound up with our Divine destiny.

Let this Pesach be a watershed moment for all of us. Let us rediscover the clarity, the understanding, the moral vision and spiritual memory we received from our Creator at Sinai – and that we need to navigate this post-October 7 world.