In his commentary on the Haggadah Maaseh Nissim Rabbi Yaakov of Lisa famously asks: If someone were released from prison and subsequently imprisoned again would he invite his cell mates to gather with him to celebrate the day of his initial release? 

Yet the servitude of Mitzrayim was hardly the last time that Jews were enslaved by another people. The Babylonian Persian Greek and Roman exiles followed. The Promised Land flowing with milk and honey has been ours for but a brief portion of our national existence.

Still Jews have gone on celebrating the Seder even in the midst of the most brutal oppression whether hiding in caves from the Romans or in dark cellars evading the Inquisition. 

Even in the Nazi death camps Jews collected kernels of wheat grain by grain in order to bake matzos. Despite working endless days at backbreaking labor on a diet about half of subsistence level they traded away their major source of sustenance for less nutritious matzos. Others who could not find matzos exchanged their bread and soup for raw potatoes to avoid eating chometz even after being told by rabbanim that pikuach nefesh considerations required them to eat bread. 

Like our forebears in Egypt Jews in the death camps had their spouses and children ripped from their arms; they lacked a moment to breathe or call their own. It took no act of imagination for them to comprehend the words of the Haggadah: “They tortured us; they oppressed us; they subjected us to unbearable pressure.”

Yet they still recited praises to Hashem for having taken us “from slavery to freedom sorrow to joy from mourning to festive days from darkness to great light from slavery to redemption.” 

A survivor of Buchenwald recalls a Seder in the spring of 1945 in a bloc comprised mostly of Jewish children between nine and 16. He describes listening as one young boy recited the Four Questions to an older boy. In another bunk he heard a young boy telling his friends the story of Pesach.

How could they have done so? Why did they do it?

The first answer is that the memory of the Redemption from Mitzrayim — from the most brutal of nations ruled by the most brutal of rulers — continued to be a source of hope no matter the circumstances in which Jews found themselves on leil haSeder. The Torah refers to the holiday as Chag HaAviv or Chag HaMatzos. But we call it Pesach in remembrance of Hashem skipping over the houses of bnei Yisrael when He killed the Egyptian firstborn. 

And so has He always skipped over us. In Mark Twain’s memorable words those who oppressed enslaved and murdered us filled the planet with sound and splendor. But in the end they vanished and the Jew remained. 

Every Jew knows on account of the redemption from Egypt that no matter how bad his present situation next year he will be free and if not next year the one after that. And even if he personally does not survive — like all those who perished in Egypt or in the death camps — the Jewish People will survive to celebrate Pesach in happier circumstances. 

BUT HOPES FOR OUR COLLECTIVE future are only part of the matter. Yetziyas Mitzrayim does not serve only as proof that Hashem is capable of rescuing us no matter how hopeless our circumstances. At the deepest level the imprint of Yetziyas Mitzrayim remains unaffected by subsequent exiles and oppression.

The Redemption did not end with going out from Egypt but with Sinai. Through the miracles of Egypt and the giving of the Torah God revealed a realm of the spirit beyond the power of any tyrant to touch. 
The matzoh reminds us that our freedom is ultimately spiritual. Matzoh writes the Maharal is the symbol of our freedom precisely because it is spiritual bread. It consists only of its absolute essentials: flour and water. Any additional ingredients render it unfit. The spiritual world is one of simplicity and unity; the physical world by contrast is one of structures piled on one another a world of amalgamated building blocks. 
Because the freedom gained was spiritual in nature it has never been fully lost. We ceased to be slaves to slaves and became servants of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The pharaohs in each generation attempt to intrude on that relationship but there remains a point beyond which they cannot harm us. 
With their celebration of Pesach in the death camps Jews expressed their defiance and contempt for their Nazi oppressors no less bravely than did their ancestors when they took the sheep worshiped by the Egyptians and slaughtered them prior to leaving Egypt. 
“You can starve us you can kill us but you cannot destroy the most essential aspect of our being ” they silently proclaimed. “For you cannot deprive us of the knowledge of a world filled with purpose a world in which every aspect of physical existence even the greatest physical degradation can be filled with holiness.” 
The Redemption revealed a world of spirit and our access to it. And that revelation remains with us in all times and all places. 

Are These Not Jewish Children?

 My friend Rabbi Ron Yitzchok Eisenman sent out a “Short Vort” on the occasion of the 80^th yahrtzeit of Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld the legendary leader of the Eidah HaChareidis that in my opinion every Torah Jew needs to read.

The story he found noteworthy is recorded in Al Chomosayich Yerushalayim the biography of long-time Agudah leader Rabbi Moshe Blau. Rabbi Blau related that one Tu B’Shvat he left the old Shaare Zedek hospital together with Rabbi Sonnenfeld. From a distance he saw a very large mixed group of teenagers parading in honor of Tu B’Shvat each group carrying a Zionist flag at the fore.

Knowing that the sight of a mixed group of immodestly dressed teenagers would cause Rabbi Sonnenfeld pain Rabbi Blau suggested that they go back inside the hospital. “No” Rabbi Sonnefeld replied. And then he asked “Are these not Jewish children?”

As the group passed singing their workmen’s songs and forcing all in their path to the side of the road Rabbi Blau noticed Rav Sonnenfeld murmuring something to himself. He leaned forward to listen and heard the Rav reciting the verses from Tehillim: “Yosef Hashem aleichem aleichem v’al bneichem. Bruchim atem laHashem oseh shomayim va’aretz – May Hashem add upon you upon you and your children. Blessed are you to Hashem the Creator of heaven and earth” (Tehillim 115:14–15).

None of us presume I trust to be more fervent in our opposition to Zionism than Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld or more zealous in our concern for tzniyus but neither caused him to forget that the teenagers in front of him were also “Jewish children ” the descendants of Avraham Yitzchak and Yaakov.

An Apt – If Unintended – Comparison

The New York Times’s Nick Kristof opined recently that the debate about a military strike on Iran is just like that over climate change — “credible experts are overwhelmingly on one side.” Logically nothing joins the two issues other than Kristof’s eagerness to dismiss the opinions of those who disagree with him as beneath consideration.

Kristoff’s analogy of the two issues is right but in exactly the opposite direction from what he intended: There is serious expert debate about both issues. Sixteen leading scientists including distinguished professors at MIT Princeton Cambridge and Hebrew University published an open letter in January entitled: No Need to Panic about Global Warming. Ivar Giaever a Nobel Laureate in Physics resigned from the American Physical Society over the statement of the organization’s president that the evidence is “incontrovertible” that absent “mitigating actions significant disruptions of the Earth’s physical and ecological systems … are likely to occur.”

That assertion of incontrovertibility flies in the face of the stubborn refusal of the observed facts to conform to the computer models on which global warming alarmism is based. The temperature projections of all four reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 1989 have been far off. Ditto the computer projections for the heat of the upper levels of the oceans. And no warming at all has taken place since 2000.

The alarmist computer models are predicated on the assumption that atmospheric CO₂ indirectly causes heat to be trapped by increasing atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds. But NASA satellite data reported in the peer-reviewed journal Remote Sensing shows a “huge discrepancy” between the heat actually being released into space (and not trapped) and that predicted by the computer models.

Most devastating for the alarmist position experiments performed in August by the CERN super-collider have demonstrated that cosmic rays produced by the sun promote molecules that seed clouds which in turn result in a cloudier and cooler earth. The strength of the sun’s magnetic field determines how many cosmic rays reach Earth and thus the sun has a major impact on climate. That explains why many scientists believe that solar activity better correlates with global warming and cooling over the last thousand years than do levels of man-made CO₂ gas.

And finally there is the damning evidence from the two batches of thousands of intercepted e-mails between those who control the IPCC process in which they discuss how to doctor the data and suppress wayward findings which would not be necessary if a consensus really existed.

Kristof is on no firmer ground with respect to the “consensus” of experts about a military attack on Iran in 2012. He admits that there is an “honest debate” about whether the red line for military action should be Iran developing a nuclear capability or actual weaponization. Given the lack of intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program (as reported in the NYT) it is hard to argue for waiting until Iran actually starts assembling a weapon.

But after 2012 the Iranian program will be largely immunized from Israeli attack. Everything might then depend on a president freed from the pesky restraints of electoral politics. What do the experts say about that?