{ "clip_details": { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "memory-pesach-tale-two-stories", "title": "The Memory of Pesach: A Tale of Two Stories", "author": "Shalom Hartman", "author_handle": "shalom-hartman", "author_initials": "SH", "covertext": "By Rabbi Dr. Donniel HartmanOur rabbis teach that all Jews must see themselves as if they had come out of Egypt. The Exo...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/207273/conversions/SHI-logo-2019-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/207273/SHI-logo-2019.jpg", "body": "<p>By Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman</p><p>Our rabbis teach that all Jews must see themselves as if they had come out of Egypt. The Exodus from Egypt is not a story of a distant past but a living memory which must shape our present lives and identities as Jews.</p><p>Memory is a tricky thing in which we are not merely passive recipients of past events, but active participants in shaping the memory and determining its features. The critical question we have to ask ourselves is what story we choose to tell. What do we remember from Egypt and most importantly what do we take away from that memory as a foundation block for contemporary Jewish life?</p><p>The Exodus story, as retold by our tradition, has many facets, each weaving its own narrative and moral lesson. The most dominant and common one portrays our liberation from Egypt as a story of Jewish election. It tells of our suffering in Egypt, of a God who remembers God’s covenant with our forefathers, and who reaches down with a mighty hand and outstretched arm and with great miracles to free us and to make us God’s inheritance and chosen people.</p><p>In telling the story we remember the liberation, so we can bask in the light of God’s love and care and feel the pride and dignity of being God’s chosen people. We count, relish, magnify, and multiply each miracle as evidence both of God’s unique love for us and as a foundation for the promise of things yet to come.</p><p>This story has served us well, especially in the darkest moments of exile as we awaited our next liberation story. It served to create a pride of membership even when our precarious political status seemed to suggest that we were the abandoned child. As our freedom and power increased with the rebirth of Israel and our newfound acceptance in the Western world the pride taken from the story served and serves as an ongoing catalyst for our people to strive for excellence and to define ourselves by our achievements. It is a story which embeds us with a sense of dignity and self-worth in which to be a Jew and to be mediocre is viewed as a contradiction in terms unworthy of the people who were freed by God from Egypt.</p><p>This story, however, can and at times has a darker side. Pride can be the mother of arrogance, and chosenness, instead of serving as a catalyst for achievement, can be the foundation for entitlement. The story of God’s love can give birth to a sense of superiority and a denigration of those who were not the recipients of that love.</p><p>In truth this darker side can be found throughout our tradition, as the Exodus story was sometimes used to discriminate between Jew and non-Jew. It even finds its way into the ending of the traditional Passover Haggadah with the calling for God to pour out God’s wrath upon the nations that do not know God. </p><p>As we tell the story it is important that we own this part as well, for to ignore it will allow it to fester and to influence our soul. It is only when a symptom of an illness is recognized that appropriate acts can be instituted to activate healing.</p><p>As a part of this healing there is a dimension of the Exodus which rarely enters into the telling of the story or the traditional Haggadah, but which had significant impact on the Jewish moral code. It is the part of the story that precedes the liberation and which speaks of our humble and suffering past. It obligates us to use this memory as a catalyst for responsibility toward all who are in a similar circumstance. </p><p>If the first story unites us with fellow Jews, the second places us forever in the midst of the community of sufferers. It tempers our pride with a measure of humility to ensure that arrogance and entitlement never become our inheritance. It channels our drive to achieve into areas which do not merely service our own interests but the needs of all, especially the downtrodden and forgotten.</p><p>If the prayer, “Pour out Your Wrath,” is the personification of our darker side, then the beginning of the Haggadah, “This is the bread of affliction, which our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt. All who are hungry, let them come and eat. All who are needy, let them join us at our table,” is meant to serve as its antidote.</p><p>Both, however, are present in our story. It behooves our people, whose liberation story serves as a catalyst for excellence, that we recognize that it is our responsibility to determine which side of the story we tell and which side we allow to define our future as a people. It is true that we were once slaves; now, however, we are free. As a free people the power is now in our hands to be a force for good or for evil. It is in our hands to show that Jewish pride and a sense of God’s love for us need not lead to arrogance and blindness to the needs and rights of others. It is in our hands to determine which story will define us as a people. Here too mediocrity and being Jewish must be a contradiction in terms.</p>", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "http://hartman.org.il/Blogs_View.asp?Article_Id=659&Cat_Id=273&Cat_Type=Blogs", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": { "title": "Greatest Hits Haggadah", "slug": "greatest-hits-haggadah", "author": "Haggadot" }, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "-- Exodus Story", "slug": "exodus-story" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 459, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "The Memory of Pesach: A Tale of Two Stories | Passover haggadah by Shalom Hartman", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/memory-pesach-tale-two-stories", "og:title": "The Memory of Pesach: A Tale of Two Stories | Passover haggadah by Shalom Hartman", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, "contributed_by": { "author": "Shalom Hartman", "handle": "shalom-hartman", "author_initials": "SH", "total_books": 0, "total_clips": 5, "total_followers": 0, "is_following": 0 }, "user_book": { "title": "Greatest Hits Haggadah", "reading_length": 102, "author": "Haggadot", "author_initials": "HA", "table_of_content": { "Introduction": [ "OurJewishCommunity.org Introduction ", "Seder Plate", "Silent Meditation on Candelighting", "A Seder plate for current events", "Passover Themes Meaningful to Interfaith Families", "The Cup of Deliverance- Second Cup of Wine", "Matzah" ], "Kadesh": [ "Wine", "Four Cups of Wine", "Traditional - Kadesh", "Kadesh" ], "Urchatz": [ "Handwashing - Urchatz", "Urchatz", "Hand Washing", "Urchatz" ], "Karpas": [ "Karpas", "Karpas", "Karpas Kavannah", "Dip Parsley in Saltwater" ], "Yachatz": [ "Breaking the matzah - hunger", "The Middle Matzah Horcrux", "Entering the Broken World", "Yachatz - Break the Middle Matzah" ], "Maggid - Beginning": [ "Maggid" ], "-- Four Questions": [ "Traditional - Four Questions", "Four Questions in Fictional Languages" ], "-- Four Children": [ "Four Daughters ", "Four Children", "the four children", "Four Children", "The Four Adults", "Golden Girls Wise Child" ], "-- Exodus Story": [ "Natalia Kadish", "Exodus Story", "Geulah", "The Memory of Pesach: A Tale of Two Stories", "Min Hametzar - Calling Out from the Narrow Place", "The 21 Jump Street", "Letter to My Old Master", "DAYENU: An Exercise in Gratitude" ], "-- Ten Plagues": [ "Ten ancient and modern plagues", "Circle of Plagues", "The Journey Towards Liberation - The Hard Parts", "Ten Plagues - Frog ", "10 Plagues, Amsterdam Haggadah, 1738, NLI" ], "-- Cup #2 & Dayenu": [ "dayeinu graph", "Maggid Closing - Dayenu", "Pesach Matzah Maror", "The Passover Symbols, The Orange & Miriam's Cup", "Dayenu with English Hebrew and Transliteration", "love", "Opening the door for Elijah " ], "": [ "The Second Cup", "Who Knows One?" ], "Rachtzah": [ "Rachtzah" ], "Motzi-Matzah": [ "Motzi-Matzah", "DIY Matzoh Baking", "What is the meaning of matzah?", "Eating the Matza", "Why Flatbread?" ], "Maror": [ "Horseradish", "The Journey Towards Liberation - The complicated parts", "Marror- Daniela Hojda", "maror", "Maror", "Maror Cocktail" ], "Koreich": [ "Hillel Sandwich ", "Mixing the Bitter and the Sweet", "The Future, the Past, and the Present", "who invented the sandwhich", "Hillel's Sandwich" ], "Shulchan Oreich": [ "A Fish Tale", "The Meal", "Shulchan Orech", "Passover Around The World Trivia", "Dinner is Served" ], "Tzafun": [ "Afikomen - bread of subjectivity", "The Afikoman" ], "Bareich": [ "Opening the Door for Elijah ", "After Such A Fine Story: Blessing After Eating the Seder Meal", "Blessing for the third cup of wine", "Miriam's Cup", "Miriam's Cup by Miriam Jerris", "Ruth's Cup: A New Passover Ritual Celebrating Jewish Diversity" ], "Hallel": [ "Sharing Responsibility", "To Say Nothing But Thank You", "Zeroah" ], "Commentary / Readings": [ "Praise the Contrary and Its Defenders" ], "Nirtzah": [ "NEXT YEAR IN... : A Note to my Future Self", "won't you celebrate with me, by Lucille Clifton", "Nirtzah", "Nirtzah", "Neertzah", "Echad Mi Yodea -- Who Knows One -- Hebrew / English / Transliteration", "Counting the Omer" ], "Songs": [ "One Little Goat - חַד גַּדְיָא", "Miriams Song", "Adir Hu", "Hatikva", "Ki Lo Naeh" ] } }, "clips_by_author": [ { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "freedom-or-freedom", "title": "Freedom To or Freedom From?", "author": "Shalom Hartman", "author_handle": "shalom-hartman", "author_initials": "SH", "covertext": "By Rabbi Dr. Donniel HartmanThere is a certain inherent ambivalence when we think of the meaning of freedom, and its ass...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/207273/conversions/SHI-logo-2019-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/207273/SHI-logo-2019.jpg", "body": "<p>By Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman</p><p>There is a certain inherent ambivalence when we think of the meaning of freedom, and its association with the holiday of Pesach. One of the essential features of the liberation story is our freedom from human subjugation: \"Yesterday we were slaves to Pharaoh, today we are free men and women.\"</p><p>This freedom, however, did not come about as a result of a revolution instigated by the Jewish people but rather, as the biblical story relates, through the redemptive hand of God. As a result, this physical redemption is often connected with a religious duty: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery; You shall have no other gods besides me” (Exodus 20, 2-3).</p><p>What is the nature of this connection? Is it an obligation or an opportunity? Is our commitment to God and the Torah a price we pay for the Exodus, or is it a gift – a gift made possible by our physical freedom, but one that we may choose whether or not to receive? The question we as Jews ought to reflect on this Pesach is whether the freedom from Egypt is limited to liberation from physical servitude, or does it include freedom of conscience and faith. </p><p>Historically, Jews did not engage extensively in questions of personal autonomy; at most, they spoke about what Isaiah Berlin referred to as \"positive liberty\" (Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty). As opposed to the simple, more intuitive concept of negative liberty - “the freedom from” constraints or compulsion, positive liberty is “the freedom to” - the freedom to be all one ought to be, to do that which is the fullest expression of one’s potential. The notion of positive liberty is clearly present in the rabbinic tradition, in such statements as, \"There is no free person but he or she who studies Torah\" (Avot 6:2). Freedom, for Jews, has traditionally meant “the freedom to” - the ability to achieve complete self-realization, through a firm, unwavering commitment to God and His word.</p><p><strong>Commitment to religious freedom</strong> </p><p>Standing alone, however, positive liberty is an extremely precarious concept. We need look no further than the 20th century, when different fascist leaders established their rule on a promise of positive liberty (the freedom to live in a stable society, the freedom to attain financial prosperity, the freedom to fulfill one’s destiny as a member of the master race), to appreciate the danger it harbors: the creation of oppressive, totalitarian regimes, violently trampling the rights of their citizens in the name of freedom. Without the underlying basis of negative liberty, positive liberty means nothing more than the freedom to do that which others determine you ought, to fulfill what others have decided to be your potential.</p><p>This question becomes all the more pointed in the context of the State of Israel. So long as Jews lived in Western liberal democracies, they vicariously inherited the value of negative liberty and function within its confines. But an essential question facing the modern State of Israel, the only Jewish democracy, is what concept of liberty does it officially espouse? Is Israel a “free state” that dictates the forms of Judaism that are most appropriate? Or does it guarantee its citizens the right and conditions to determine their own individual Jewish path?</p><p>If Pesach is going to be not simply a liberation story of our past but a modern, continuous liberation story \"in every generation,” we must recognize that positive liberty is an incomplete liberty, that the freedom from Egypt - indeed our very existence as a free people in our own country - must be accompanied by a commitment to religious freedom and the diversity it will engender.</p><p>The spirit of Pesach requires a national pledge to free Israeli society of all and any vestiges of religious coercion, including the manipulation of public funds in order to constrain spiritual choices. In the spirit of Pesach we must commit ourselves to speaking only in the language of education, and never in the language of indoctrination and coercion.</p><p>One of the great paradoxes of Israeli society is that those who function in the name of positive liberty actively limit the actualization of the spiritual potential of Jews. Consequently, the State of Israel is one of the only places in which non-Orthodox Jews can barely receive a Jewish education. Religious coercion and legislation hasn’t furthered our marriage with God; rather, it has created an ever-increasing rift and divorce.</p><p>The freedom of Pesach has multiple dimensions. It is our responsibility to ensure it is understood and employed as a catalyst for progress, as a basis for assimilating the broadest notions of negative liberty within our religious language and values. Just as we reject being enslaved by Pharaoh, so too must we reject the subjugation of our minds and souls to any authority. In the end, if God is to be the God of the Jewish people, if Judaism and its values are to shape our lives, it will not be because we owe God for our redemption from Egypt, but because we choose a life with God as free men and women.</p>", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "http://hartman.org.il/SHINews_View.asp?Article_Id=84&Cat_Id=303", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "-- Exodus Story", "slug": "exodus-story" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 300, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Freedom To or Freedom From? | Passover haggadah by Shalom Hartman", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/freedom-or-freedom", "og:title": "Freedom To or Freedom From? | Passover haggadah by Shalom Hartman", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "radical-uncertainty-history", "title": "The Radical Uncertainty of History", "author": "Shalom Hartman", "author_handle": "shalom-hartman", "author_initials": "SH", "covertext": "Rabbi Prof. David Hartman z\"l  talks about the way Israelites' enslavement in Egypt reminds us of the fragility of glob...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/207273/conversions/SHI-logo-2019-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/207273/SHI-logo-2019.jpg", "body": "<p><span>Rabbi Prof. David Hartman <em>z\"l</em>  talks about the way Israelites' enslavement in Egypt reminds us of the fragility of global interrelationships today. </span></p>", "cliptype": "video", "clipsource": "http://hartman.org.il/SHINews_View.asp?Article_Id=85", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xan-QEHyQ_g" }, "thumbnail": "https://assets.haggadot.com/clips/391686/conversions/hqdefault-cover.jpg", "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": null, "slug": null } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 282, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "The Radical Uncertainty of History | Passover haggadah by Shalom Hartman", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/radical-uncertainty-history", "og:title": "The Radical Uncertainty of History | Passover haggadah by Shalom Hartman", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "encouraging-culture-questions", "title": "Encouraging A Culture of Questions", "author": "Shalom Hartman", "author_handle": "shalom-hartman", "author_initials": "SH", "covertext": "By Noam ZionIn a culture of questions like that of the Rabbis, they wish to understand the purpose and the reason for ea...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/207273/conversions/SHI-logo-2019-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/207273/SHI-logo-2019.jpg", "body": "<strong>By Noam Zion</strong><p>In a culture of questions like that of the Rabbis, they wish to understand the purpose and the reason for each commandment and every social institution and to exercise free choice between options. This type of education is critical by nature and it generates not only the aspiration to political freedom, but also spiritual and intellectual freedom.</p><p>That is why the Rabbis took the image of the first Jew, who obeyed unquestioningly the divine commandment of lech lecha - “Go out of your land” - and accorded the spiritual hero the content appropriate to their world.</p><p>The Rabbis, like Philo the first century Jewish philosopher, attribute to Abraham a search for truth that involved challenging the accepted beliefs of his idolatrous society. (See the midrash about Abraham the iconoclast in the Haggadah itself.)</p><p>It is noteworthy that the Rabbis, and following in their footsteps, Maimonides, painted a portrait of Abraham as a doubter, someone who questions society’s conventions and is searching for a philosophical truth. He also tries to free others from their intellectual bondage by creating a situation that forces them to pose questions, as Hillel did with the proselyte and as the Rabbis demanded that each parent do on Seder night with one’s own child.</p><p>Here, the Rabbis painted a portrait of Abraham based on the Biblical nucleus of the story of Sodom, in which God encourages Abraham to ask tough intellectual and moral questions, challenging the supreme authority - God.</p><p><strong>Willing participation</strong></p><p>“Shall not the judge of all the land be just?” - This rhetorical question seems defiant toward God, and yet God invited this defiance by involving Abraham in the debate concerning the fate of Sodom. Why? Why did God not fear rebellion? Why did God agree to enter in the extended negotiations that involved making concessions to the product of God’s own creation, Abraham?</p><p>The answer, in my opinion, lies in a radical educational approach - God’s desire to teach humans to willingly participate in God’s plan, out of rational understanding and recognition of the intrinsic justice of God’s Torah.</p><p>The Rabbis also took this direction and constructed an educational method based on the idea of the mentor, the apprentice. In this relationship, there are no questions that may not be asked, no doubt that may not be raised - as long as the true motive for the question is a genuine desire to learn.</p><p><strong>Raising doubts, continuing tradition</strong></p><p>The child and spiritual heir, who raised doubts and discovered the inner logic of the Seder, who queried and contributed to its ongoing design in a process of questions and answers, will continue the tradition most faithfully.</p><p>A genuine question is not a rebellion against authority, but rather authentic curiosity that enables the tradition to be passed on. It is not easy for authoritarian figures who are already convinced of the rationality of their world and of the unreason of other ways, to listen to criticism from the younger generation.</p><p>It is vital that the parent-teachers learn at the very least how to open themselves, their teachings and the existing social order to the new questions. If the parent and teacher discover they have innocent pupils before them who do not know how to ask, they must open up to them and open them up to the asking of incisive questions.</p><p>Democratic society can learn a great deal from the openness of our Rabbis to the culture of kushiyot - questions. A kushiya is not merely an educational tool to arouse the interest of students in the “material” of Passover, but rather an educational “form” that educates teacher and pupil, parent and child to the dialogue of freedom.</p>", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "http://hartman.org.il/Blogs_View.asp?Article_Id=83&Cat_Id=275&Cat_Type=Blogs", "featured": 1, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "-- Four Questions", "slug": "four-questions" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 289, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Encouraging A Culture of Questions | Passover haggadah by Shalom Hartman", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/encouraging-culture-questions", "og:title": "Encouraging A Culture of Questions | Passover haggadah by Shalom Hartman", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "fifth-cup-future", "title": "A Fifth Cup for the Future", "author": "Shalom Hartman", "author_handle": "shalom-hartman", "author_initials": "SH", "covertext": "By Rabbi Baruch Frydman-Kohl During the Passover Seder, the four cups of wine mark the four promises of God: “I am YHVH....", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/207273/conversions/SHI-logo-2019-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/207273/SHI-logo-2019.jpg", "body": "<p><strong>By Rabbi Baruch Frydman-Kohl</strong></p>\n\n<p>During the Passover Seder, the four cups of wine mark the four promises of God: “I am YHVH. I will free you… I will deliver you... I will redeem you… I will take you to be my people (Exodus 6.6-7).” In the discussion about this in the Talmud Yerushalmi, Rabbi Tarfon suggests that an additional cup of wine should be consumed to reflect a fifth promise: “I will bring you to the Land that I promised to Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov.” According to many commentators, this is the origin of the Cup of Elijah - a fifth cup that reflects the hope for a messianic redemptive return to the Land of Israel.</p>\n\n<p>When the State of Israel was established in 1948, <a href=\"http://media.www.yucommentator.com/media/storage/paper652/news/2005/04/18/Features/dr.Menachem.Kasher.Of.Yeshiva.University-919159.shtml\">Rabbi Menachem Kasher</a> unsuccessfully proposed that after Israeli independence we should consume that fifth cup. In our home, even though we don’t drink the fifth cup, we do pour a bit from our individual cups into the Cup of Elijah to indicate that we join with God to play a part in the act of redemption. <a href=\"http://www.huc.edu/faculty/faculty/marmur.shtml\">Rabbi Michael Marmur</a> (CCAR Journal, 2007) suggests interpreting the cups of wine at the Seder as indicative of different Jewish perspectives on contemporary life, with the fifth cup representative of the role of Israel in unifying our people.</p>\n\n<p><strong>The first cup is full</strong>, reminding us of the blessing of sufficiency. This cup is for those Jews who feel blessed by our families, by having enough, and by the virtues which guide our lives - kindness and hesed, tsedakah and justice, humanity and mentschlikhkeit. <strong>This is a cup of fulfillment.</strong></p>\n\n<p><strong>The second cup is empty</strong>, signaling us that there is real poverty, powerlessness and pain in this world. We have glimpsed this on the streets of Toronto, in the news clips from Darfur, and in the missile attacks on Sderot. This cup calls us to act in solidarity with those who still experience life as problematic and painful. <strong>This is a cup of challenge.</strong></p>\n\n<p><strong>The third cup is overflowing</strong>, pointing to those who seek enlightenment, ecstasy or serenity. There are spiritual seekers who want something that will give transcendent meaning to their daily lives. Whether through kabbalah, meditation, or yoga, these Jews want something beyond the ordinary. <strong>This is the cup of rapture.</strong></p>\n\n<p><strong>The fourth cup is broken</strong>, calling us to realize that the Holocaust profoundly disrupted the lives of so many of our people. <a href=\"http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2003/oct/10/guardianobituaries\">Emil Fackenheim</a> wrote that we cannot imagine Jewish life as ever being the same after the Shoah, even as we are bidden to continue to live as Jews. This cup calls on Jews to exercise power so that we will never again become victims. <strong>This is the cup of rupture.</strong></p>\n\n<p>Rabbi Marmur writes that each of these cups is “important and each is deficient. A commitment to [individual] happiness outside of history [may create] walls” that cut off our personal lives from the rest of the world, as if our own homes and family are enough. A concern for others’ problems may bind us to the legitimacy of our own needs. A search for spiritual fulfillment can sometimes shift from self-development to self-indulgence. An awareness of rupture can too easily slide into a justification of every act in terms of a rampant survivalism.”</p>\n\n<p>In Hebrew, <em>mizug</em> is the pouring of wine. The same term refers to the blending of the many different Jews who have come to this tiny country. In a deep sense, Israel is <em>mizug galuyot</em>, the mixing of the diversity of Diaspora Jewish life into a new blend. Israel pours for us a blended fifth cup of wine, for while it has provided survival, security and stability for our people, it is also full of poverty, pain, and the challenge of making peace. Just as the search for spiritual uplift through meditation or mitzvot is a part of life in the Holy Land for many Jews, so too is awareness of the Holocaust a constant reminder of the need for strength, swiftness and self-sufficiency. Israel is a complex country seeking a civic culture that will blend the wine of all the initial four cups.</p>\n\n<p>May each of the cups you drink during Pesach add to your self-awareness and understanding of the variety of Jewish life. When you sit for seder, think about the historic issues Israel resolved, the contemporary challenges it faces, and how Israel might blend and unify the various aspects of your Jewish yearnings and identity.</p>\n\n<p> <em>Baruch Frydman-Kohl is the Anne and Max Tanenbaum Chair in Rabbinics and Rabbi of Beth Tzedec Congregation in Toronto, Canada. 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