Opinion

As published in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles on April 24, 2022

I was watching a CNN report about Russian atrocities in Ukraine when the email arrived. It was from a producer for RT, the Russian government television network, asking to interview me about what she called “the American media’s collusion with the Third Reich.”

As Pesach approaches, the story of the Exodus from Egypt will be told and retold many times.  The rich history of Moshe coming back to his people and, as G-d’s emissary, freeing them from bondage.  The Jews cried out for a savior for centuries before Moshe arrived, and when he did, they were freed.

“Well, they realized that it’s in their better business interest to go along with [insert Leftist cause here].  They don’t really believe this; they are just making money.  What’s the big deal?”  

The Seder is, in many ways, a study in contradictions. We recline like aristocrats while eating the bread of the poor. We are required to see ourselves as actually having participated in the Exodus from slavery to freedom, while proclaiming “This year we are slaves.” The importance of the Seder is not just as a means for remembering an historical event that is the very bedrock of our existence as a people; it is an affirmation that the Exodus from Egypt is an ongoing process. It is something we live every day as a nation and as individuals.

As we approach Yom HaShoah, I want to write not about the Holocaust, but about memory.

What is memory? How do we preserve memory? How can we, who learned of the Holocaust from the people who lived through it, make the memory important for our children and grandchildren for generations to come?

Fringe politicians in every country occasionally say crazy things, so perhaps we shouldn’t get too alarmed over the fact that Gaby Lasky, a Jewish member of the Knesset, last week expressed support for the Palestinian Authority’s payments to families of terrorists.