A not-so-young single woman sent me the following note after Pesach. I believe that her powerful message can give strength to anyone, regardless of their situation:
“Shalom, Sivan. I had a pretty lousy holiday, but on the seventh day of Pesach I remembered an idea I once heard:
“Every holiday we receive a gift – we are replenished with faith and holiness. We receive this gift without even realizing it. If we participated in a seder – drank four cups of wine, read the Haggadah and ate matzah – this gift is ours.
“While it’s true that the more we invested in the Seder, the more obvious the gift, yet even if we were anxious, sad, bitter, ashamed, and envious of our married sister sitting there surrounded by her children, and the last thing we wanted was another holiday like this one – G-d has still given us these gifts.
“We ate matzah – boom! We received an injection of faith for the entire year. This dose of faith is absorbed into our bodies and souls. It doesn’t matter how we felt. Consciously or unconsciously, we have been transformed by this experience. By participating in these mitzvot, we have been granted renewed energy.
“From now through the rest of the year, as we face struggles and challenges, sadness and despair, we can draw strength from these gifts we received on Pesach. For just as G-d was with our ancestors in Egypt, He hears our cries and feels our pain, and in the end, our personal redemption will come too.”
Did you hear about the students from Modi’in?
“Shalom Sivan,
“The holiday of Pesach, the holiday of freedom, is over but it’s important that more people should hear the following story. It’s a story about the freedom that comes from living by our own distinct values and being spiritually independent, as opposed to being slaves to the values of the prevailing culture around us.
“Delegations of Modi’in students from Amit High School and the Lapid Yeshiva of Bnei Akiva arrived last Friday to an advanced stage of an international robotics competition in Houston, Texas. The deciding round of competition was scheduled for Shabbat.
“We then announced in a live broadcast to all the participants that we were glad to have reached this stage of the competition but we had to retire from it. We were doing this out of pride in adhering to the supreme Jewish value of the Sabbath.
“We added that everyone was welcome to come to our booth at the competition and peruse material explaining our observance of this holy day. We then wished everyone Shabbat shalom and dedicated standing by our values to our brothers being held hostage and to the entire nation of Israel.
“We always strive to go as far as we can in any competition but not at the expense of our Jewish values.”
Translated by Janine Muller Sherr and Yehoshua Siskin.
