Diary of a Chief Rabbi

Pesach vision gives us hope

Rare are the times when you know you are in the presence of history. For me, it happened eight years ago, at the start of the Gulf War.

My family and I were in Jerusalem. We had asked for my appointment as Chief Rabbi to be deferred for a year. We knew that as soon as the job began it would take up all our time. I wanted time together as a family, time to be together above all time to breathe in the inspiration that I knew the job would require. That, for me, meant one place- Jerusalem, the home of the Jewish heart, the place which, according to Jewish tradition, the Divine presence never left. We went seeking peace. Within weeks we found ourselves in the midst of war.

Thirty nine times SCUD missiles rained down on Israel. Thirty nine times we made our way to our sealed room until the all-clear sounded. It was agonising seeing our children wearing gas masks, not knowing if the next attack would involve chemical weapons. The British embassy advised us to leave. Elaine and I were moved that not one of our children would hear of such a thing. They insisted on staying. While Israel was in danger, that’s where they wanted to be.

Early in the war a British delegation from the Board of Deputies came on a solidarity mission, and they sent a message asking whether I would come and address them. I agreed. I can still remember the words I said and I share them with you as a thought for this Pesach.

There is a well-known Mishnah in Berakhot which everyone knows because it’s quoted in the Haggadah. It says this. Rabbi Eleazar ben Azaryah said,

"I am like a man of seventy, and yet I never understood why we speak about the going out of Egypt at night until Ben Zoma derived it from the verse, ‘In order that you should remember the going out of Egypt all the days of your life’. Had it only said, ‘the days’, it would have meant ‘during day-time’. But since it says ‘All the days’, this comes to include nights. But the sages said, ‘the days’ means ‘this world’, ‘all the days’ comes to include the messianic age."

We are familiar with the text. What is less well known is the continuation of the debate in the Baylonian Talmud. We think of it as primarily an argument over whether to mention the exodus at night. In fact, though, the Talmud makes clear it was fundamentally a debate about whether we would continue to tell the story of the going out of Egypt in the messianic age. This is how the Talmud takes up the argument:

"Ben Zoma said to the sages: Will we really tell the story of the exodus in the messianic age? Surely the prophet Jeremiah said otherwise. He said [Jeremiah 23]: "The time will come" declares the Lord when people will no longer say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt’. Instead they will say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives who brought the children of the house of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the countries where He banished them’." According to Jeremiah, the exodus of the future will be even greater than that of the past. That was the view of Ben Zoma almost two thousand years ago.

I quoted this passage to the members of the Board, and then said this."You and I are living at such a time. For there is one respect in which what is happening today is even greater than what happened in the days of Moses. In the days of Moses the Torah says that when Pharaoh let the Israelites go, God did not lead them by the direct route, through the land of the Philistines. God Himself believed that ‘If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.’ After ten plagues the Egyptians were prepared to let the Israelites go, and the Israelites themselves were ready to leave. But only if it was safe. God knew that if they faced war, they would vote to go back."

"Today, because of the Gulf War, most of the stands at Ben Gurion airport are closed. Commercial flights have been cancelled. Israel is under missile attack. But there is one set of flights that has continued without a break - the planes bringing Russian immigrants. The Russians know that Israel is at war. Yet they do not turn back. They keep on coming. That is an exodus more remarkable than the one that took place in Moses’ time. We have lived to see the fulfilment of Jeremiah’s vision and Ben Zoma’s hope."

It is all too easy to live in the present and forget the perspective of history. Often when we think of Israel, we think of the thorny problems of the peace process, the divisions in Israel itself, the tense atmosphere that prevails between different sectors of Israeli society. They are real. But they are less than half the story.

In our century we have witnessed the greatest miracle since biblical times. The Jewish people has recovered its sovereignty. We are no longer a nation without a home. The language of the Bible lives again. The land of the patriarchs and prophets is ours once more. And from more than a hundred countries, Jews have returned in the greatest exodus of modern times.

Why? Not least because, for two thousand years we never stopped telling the story on seder night. A hundred generations of Jewish parents told their children: "This year here, next year in the land of Israel. This year slaves, next year we will be free." If you ever doubt the strength of faith, think of Pesach – the greatest proof on earth of the power of a vision and a hope.