The Paradox of Passover 2025 - with Rachel Goldberg
Jews began celebrating Passover during the actual exodus from Egypt, sometime in the 13th–15th century BCE, and the tradition has continued—evolving but unbroken—ever since. To honor this tradition, we will be doing something different on this Call me Back episode - we will be talking about Passover, and about what this tradition can teach us about this paradoxical moment.
With us today is Rachel Goldberg, who – for most of her career – was a professional Jewish educator. We wanted to speak with her as we prepare for our seders.
Full Transcript:
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
RG: I think this year there is one question and one question only: why are they still there? We actually have an obligation this year to really beat ourselves up at the Seder because the whole point of Passover is supposed to be a commemoration of leaving the worst form of bondage and slavery that we experienced. And how can we do that this year when we know there are 59 people who are still there, 24 of whom are alive, alive, and in the worst, most horrific bondage that we can picture. How?
DS: It's 9:30 AM on Sunday, April 6th, here in New York City. It is 4:30 PM on Sunday, April 6th in Israel as 59 hostages remain captive in Gaza and as Jews all around the world, from Sydney to Jerusalem, to Paris, London, New York, Vancouver, and beyond are preparing to celebrate Passover, the holiday of freedom. To say that this Passover is a paradox is an understatement. I do wonder if the hostages who are being starved and tortured in the tunnels of Gaza, even know it is Passover. Jews began celebrating Pesach during the actual exodus from Egypt sometime in the range of the 13th to 15th century BCE. And the tradition has continued evolving, but unbroken ever since. To honor this tradition, we will be doing something different on this Call me Back episode, we'll be talking about Passover and about what this tradition can teach us about this paradoxical moment. With us today is Rachel Goldberg, who really needs no introduction to our audience, but there is another part of Rachel's life that most of you probably don't know. For most of her career, Rachel was a professional Jewish educator, and I was hoping to speak with her as I sat down to prepare for our family Seders. Before our conversation with Rachel, two quick housekeeping notes. First, we have heard from a number of you that the State of World Jewry Address that I'll be delivering on Tuesday, May 13th at the 92nd Street Y was sold out and you were looking for ways to get tickets. A number of you reached out trying to get tickets, and the team at the 92nd Street Y asked us to update on this podcast that the event has been moved now into a larger venue at the 92nd Street Y. So it is now possible to register again if you haven't already. So if you haven't registered, we'll post a link in the show notes. And second housekeeping note, just a quick thank you to our friend and regular on this podcast, Matti Friedman, who lent Rachel Goldberg his podcast recording gear in Jerusalem today. It was an important last minute logistical hurdle he cleared for us. So thank you, Matti. Now onto Rachel Goldberg on the paradox of Passover 2025. This is Call me Back. And I am pleased to welcome back to this podcast my, oh geez, what do I do here, Rachel, my longtime friend?
RG: Very best friend who's been with you through thick and thin since we were in third grade together.
DS: So, Rachel is mocking me here because as many of you may recall, I used to, but no longer do, I used to try to characterize the friendship I had with many of my guests. And Rachel gave me tsuris offline because she said I was diluting the nature of these so-called friendships because she says you have lots of guests on, and if everyone is a longtime friend, none of them are longtime friends. And she kept banging me with that. All right, so now I don't do that. That said, regularly, that said, Rachel, I consider a friend. We'll leave it there.
RG: Oh my gosh, just a friend?
DS: Okay, sorry. Alright, dear friend, thought partner. I'll leave it there. But one very practical thing I wanted to tell you before we get into the meat of our conversation is you made me very self-conscious over Shabbat in a very healthy way, or at least in a way that my family appreciated. You don't even realize that you did this, but you and I spoke during the week about doing this podcast, and then we spoke again on Friday and I told you I would send you some notes of my thoughts on how we should go with this conversation that you would get. I would send it to you over WhatsApp and you would get them when you came out of Shabbat, ‘cause you and I spoke last before now, right before you were heading to shul on Friday. And I said, you'll get them when you come out of Shabbat. And you said, okay, but don't send them on Shabbat. And I said, oh, don't worry, I won't like, meaning I won't intrude on your Shabbat. And you said, no, no, no. Don't send them on your Shabbat.
RG: Right.
DS: And that instantly had two effects. One, out of respect for you not wanting to disrupt my Shabbat or impose on my Shabbat, I panicked late Friday afternoon telling Ilan that we had to get all our work done for this episode before our Shabbat, which, you know, we've never had that kind of panic like that at 6:00 on Friday. And two, it gave me a flashback to when we last recorded an episode. Not the last time I saw you guys, but last time we recorded an episode, which was a year ago. And this you may not remember, which is I was in Tel Aviv, you were somewhere near Haifa or something, an hour and a half away from Tel Aviv, and I was recording an episode with you at the end of Shabbat, and you had made it clear that you did not want me driving to where you and John were to record the episode on Shabbat, that I had to wait until after Shabbat to drive to you. And I'm sitting there doing the math thinking there's no way this is gonna work because I have to fly, I was flying out that night back to New York, so if I have to wait till the end of Shabbat, then drive an hour and a half, then do the episode. There's no way I will make my flight. And you had been insistent that you would not have me drive to you on Shabbat. So here we are again. And Ilan started texting me over Shabbat and I said, I'm gonna be offline for Shabbat.
RG: Because Rachel's religiously coercive.
DS: Yes! And he said, totally? I said, totally.
RG: Because I didn't want you to not enjoy Shabbat because you were trying to do something for me. It wasn't trying to impose Shabbat on you and say, here's how you have to observe, but it was that, you know, if you're gonna be with your family or doing something on your own, I don't want you breaking that in order to do something for me. But you probably had a very nice Shabbat because of it.
DS: Well, that's just it. What I was gonna tell you is we do observe Shabbat, not as strictly as you do, I think, or my sister does, or my mother does, but we do observe Shabbat. But full disclosure here, I do violate it from time to time. I will glance at my phone to see if, if any messages have come through and it's something I'm working on.
RG: There is no judgment here, but I like that this is feeling a lot more like a confession than I thought this was gonna be.
DS: Exactly. And your comment to me made me more alert, more aware about it. I will send you, by the way, there's this rabbi from Teaneck, New Jersey named Elliot Schreyer, Teaneck Orthodox Rabbi, and he did a podcast, I'm not exaggerating here when I say this. He did a podcast episode called, he did, he has a podcast, this Rabb, Listening to Call me Back on Motzei Shabbos. So the whole topic was, is it okay to listen to the podcast, 'cause from time to time, as you know, we do emergency episodes if there's big news in Israel, and we've made the decision, while we generally don't record episodes on Shabbat, we will if there's an emergency out of news. And he held a discussion on whether or not his congregants or, or those who listened to him, should they feel okay about listening to an episode that they know is recorded on Shabbat, even if they're listening to it after Shabbat. So you know, there's a lot. I'll post that podcast on the show notes too. We're gonna talk about Pesach and the Seder, and I am going to pull back here a lot and be more student and let you be teacher. You have been a teacher for much of your career. If we can pull this off, I really would like that to be the dynamic here. So I'm gonna just ask you a few questions and we'll kind of see where they go, to get you into teacher mode. So the most basic one, we have a lot of listeners who are deeply engaged with Pesach, and I think we also have a lot of Jewish listeners who are passively engaged intellectually with Pesach. And then we have non-Jewish listeners who are probably curious about Pesach but have no idea what it's really all about. So can you just talk about, let's start with the Haggadah. What is the Haggadah, which is the key book text that guides us through the Seder? What is it, uh, what makes it unique relative to what we use in other Jewish holidays and when was it written?
RG: Well, I'd even back up a little bit because most people don't like to be lost. I hate being lost, whether it's on the street in the woods in history. So I think even before talking about what is the Haggadah to just talk about where do we get this idea that we have this holiday of Passover and where do we get this idea that we have this event on the first night and first two nights outside of Israel, this event called a Seder. And so just for like a very quick crash course; the Bible starts, you have Adam and Eve and the unfortunate apple incident. You have Noah, the flood, the rainbow. You have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the forefathers. Jacob has 12 sons. One of them is Joseph, the one with the pretty coat. He ends up being sold into slavery by his brothers. And he ends up in Egypt, which sounds terrible, but they all actually end up in Egypt due to famine that was in the land of Canaan. And then things happen and regime change happens. And the Hebrew people, what we were called back then before being called the Jewish people, end up in slavery for it's debated, it's somewhere between 400 and 200 years, whatever it is, it's horrible because it's slavery. And then Moses arrives, there's the burning bush. And God says, I'm hearing the people crying out. It's time to get them out of being in bondage, being enslaved. Go get them. And that is the beginning of the book of Exodus. We had, you know, the book of Genesis. Then we have the beginning of the book of Exodus, and we start with this story of the exodus of the people who become the Jewish people leaving Egypt. And at the end of the Exodus story, we have this commandment. It's in chapter 13 of the Book of Exodus. And we have different commandments, different mitzvot, that we can do at various times of the year or at various times of the day, right? There's certain mitzvot that you could do every day. You could honor your parents every day. You could do giving charity, giving tzedakah every day. We have keeping the Sabbath that you do once a week. Then we have some commandments that we have once a year, a once a year opportunity, and the once a year opportunity on the night, the same night that we were taken out of the land of Egypt, which on the Jewish calendar is the 15th of Nissan, we have a commandment on that night in chapter 13, verse 8, and it says, that is the night that you tell your children: it is because of what God did for me, setting me free from my bondage and my slavery and my pain. That is why we are commemorating tonight. It is that night, the 15th of Nissan since we left Egypt, that the Jewish people have had a commemoration every year on that night. And initially how we did that when we were in the land of Israel, when we first came into the land of Israel, when we had a temple. So we're talking about, you know, 2000 years ago we used to bring offerings on the night of the 15th of Nissan. Now we no longer have the temple. The only part of the temple that is intact is the outer, outer western wall, which we call the western wall, or sometimes we call it the wailing wall because people go there to pray and get very emotional and there's a lot of crying that's done at the Western wall. And in place of these offerings that we used to bring, the rabbis of the Mishnaic times instituted that we would have an evening where we would come together and we would have an order of things that we would discuss. We would have certain foods that we would use that were symbolic and that would be called a Seder, because the word Seder means order and the book, the how to, how do you do a Seder book is called the Haggadah, which the shoresh, the root of the word haggadah is lehagid. To tell. So that book is the how we tell our story book, and that is how we've started this process of having these, we call them dinners, but really only one part of the Seder is the meal.
DS: Which is very frustrating to many Jews because-
RG: Oh, it's, they have no idea what they're getting into. They think, oh, I'm going to dinner. And then, you know, you're sitting there for two hours before anything even happens.
DS: Right. No, you get a little bit of parsley along the-
RG: Right, have a little, have a little snack.
DS: A celery.
RG: But what's intriguing to me about the Haggadah is that there are parts that people are familiar with. The four questions are something that people seem to learn, even if they're not very knowledgeable. I didn't grow up in a religious home, so for me, we would go to my grandparents, we would say the four questions. My grandma always had pink lemonade. My grandpa would hide, for each of the grandchildren, he would hide a piece of matzah as the afikomen, which is part of the Seder. And that was it. That was our Seder. We were very bare bones. But what I like is that the four questions are really sample questions. It's the whole point of the Seder is it's supposed to be this dynamic, interactive question and answer. Not frontal teaching, not lecture, not what I'm doing now. This is like, I'm fired. Like this would be terrible. Like you don't just have somebody talking, talking, it's, it should be this interactive, vivacious-
DS: Discussion, debate, right?
RG: Absolutely right. And so everybody has a voice. So there are sample questions and then there are sample personality types that you address. So there's, we call them the four sons. Because the haggadah was written at a time where there was not asking about, you know, the four daughters, but it's really four people. It's four personality types. It's saying there are people, even today as any educator or as any friend, when you're getting, you know, we all have friends who are more inquisitive, who are more curious. We have friends who are the devil's advocate. We have the friends who are more reserved and give space for you to talk. And then there's friends who really, we like them, but sometimes we have to say to them, how do you feel? What is happening? What is your thought process? And all of those characteristics come up in the haggadah.
DS: On the four questions, the tradition is, I don't know if it's more than just a, if it's anything beyond just a tradition or it's actually required, but the tradition is that the youngest person at the Seder table leads the four questions. And growing up, and I know that's the same today with my kids when they were growing up. And I just see this everywhere. There's this pressure on the youngest child, it's like, and the, the kids who are older than the youngest child are like, they think they like lucked out 'cause they're not the youngest one. There's all this tension around the youngest child having to quote unquote perform and sing what is the ultimately now singing ma nishtana ha-laila hazeh, lead the four questions. So I don't know where that tradition comes from, but I do think this is the point that like everyone has a role. Everyone has to be engaged. In fact, even the youngest person that six or seven or eight-year-old at the table has a role and has to be in it, so much so that these four questions that you're setting right now, they have to take the lead on.
RG: Correct. And it's also, I mean, the whole point is that we're trying to do unusual things to pique the curiosity and interest of those children. Because if we have the obligation to tell our children on that night what happened to us, then the children have to be involved, engaged, curious, and wanting to know. Otherwise we haven't fulfilled our obligation. Now, the truth is your obligation can be filled by saying in one sentence, this is the night that God saved us. We were in pain and God saved us. And you've now outside of your obligation, you've done it. But we generally try very hard to say, well, here are the things that seem unusual. And I would actually say all the more so this year, last year was horrific. This year I think is more horrific for obvious reasons and not obvious reasons. But I would say every single person who is going to a Seder this year should have on the Seder plate, either whatever is going to really peak the interest of every single person at your Seder. Even if the youngest person at your Seder is 45, it should be the masking tape with the number should be stuck on the Seder plate. A lemon that’s yellow, bitter, sour, hard to eat, hard to swallow, should be on your Seder plate. An unopened yellow flower that should be in water but isn't in water and is just sort of becoming limp and lifeless on your Seder plate. I think that there's so much opportunity and that we have actually an obligation this year to really beat ourselves up at the Seder. I really, truly believe that, and I'm feeling a lot of tension and trepidation going into this holiday because the whole point of Passover, it is supposed to be a commemoration of leaving the worst form of bondage and slavery that we ever experienced. And how can we do that this year when we know there are 59 people who are still there, 24 of whom are alive. Alive, and in the worst, most horrific bondage that we can picture. How? How do we have this commemoration when these boys, these men are there?
DS: You're saying integrate this moment in the Seder moment?
RG: I think it absolutely has to be integrated. I actually would even go so far as, I don't even know that we need four questions. I think this year there's one question and one question only, and the question is, why are they still there?
DS: I want to come back to you just 'cause I just think it's important for our listeners and viewers to just understand how you come at all of this, which includes something that I did not know what you just said a moment ago, which is that you did not grow up religious.
RG: No.
DS: So I know you as someone who is very Jewishly literate and you've been a professional Jewish educator. So how did you become that? Given that you weren't raised with that?
RG: Right. I took a wrong turn. Funny thing happened on the way to the theater. I grew up in a very Jewish and Zionistic household in that our Judaism was, our identity was defined by feeling connected to Israel, but we were not an observant family. And then accidentally, I ended up going to an Orthodox Jewish high school for a lot of different reasons that didn't have to do with religious reasons. My parents just were very worried about what was happening in the schools that they had thought I was gonna go to. I grew up in downtown Chicago and I ended up in this wonderful Jewish Orthodox high school. But in order to prepare me for that experience for eighth grade, they sent me to an Orthodox Day school in Skokie, and that was my entrance to this incredible universe of observant Judaism. And in order to help me catch up, they had tutors who helped me rabbis, who normally wouldn't have the patience for the questions I was very much asking, digging, constantly wanting to know more. And I just fell in love with that community and that world. So I started to take on different Jewish observances way before my parents did. And so I ended up in Israel for a year after high school, before going to Brandeis.
DS: So your gap year?
RG: My gap year.
DS: Yeah.
RG: And I learned more and I've always been hungry to catch up.
DS: Did you study at a Yeshiva?
RG: So no. That year I was in a program where I was at Hebrew U for a semester, and then I was on an orthodox kibbutz, um, actually in, um, the Gaza envelope for six months. And then I went to, and I mean I was learning during that time, but I wasn't in a yeshiva setting. But my high school really was an orthodox high school experience where half the day was secular studies and half the day was Jewish studies. And I was in the lowest level classes initially because I had so much of a gap, a deficit from not having that earlier. But I really felt it was this really beautiful way of life that I desperately wanted. And I really feel blessed that I've been on this journey and on this ride of gaining more and more knowledge. I think we're all like that and, um, in different subjects or topics that, that speak to us, but for me, Judaism and, uh, religious Judaism, whatever that means, uh, you know, ancient texts and really grappling with with those texts have been something that have really brought a lot of meaning and value to my life. And after Brandeis, I ended up coming, I was in New York for a year and I studied at a seminary in New York called Drisha part-time while I was also in graduate school. And then I ended up coming to Israel for what I thought was a six week program at the Pardes Institute, which is for post university Jewish learning. And I ended up staying there for five years. And it was during that time that I re-met John, 'cause he was also from Chicago and he had also been at that Orthodox Day school for high school. And I remembered him right away because John Polin was a very good basketball player in high school. So when I ran into him on the street in Jerusalem, the first thing I thought was oh look, it's that guy. I know him. And he's a good basketball player. And John was blessed to have grown up in an observant Jewish family. And so I thought he was the cat's meow.
DS: Okay, so the Haggadah contains a line that, well, let me say a couple things. One-
RG: It contains a lot of lines.
DS: It contains a lot of lines. One, there's a word that we constantly say throughout the Seder, which is zachor.
RG: Yes.
DS: Memory. We see that word I think during Pesach, during the Seder, probably more than we at any other time in the Hebrew calendar. In any holiday. So why memory, zachor, zachor, zachor. Like why is this everywhere in the Seder?
RG: You know, we have a funny relationship with remembering. We Jews. I'd even say all people, because remembering can be very grounding or it can be very drowning. We have to be very careful with what we do, with how we remember things. It is self-defining. Who are you? Don't forget where you come from. Don't forget what you're made of. Don't forget what you believe in. Don't forget what your values are. And on the other hand, if you're only looking back to define yourself, because time unfortunately flows forward and our trajectory is forward. If we're not looking forward and allowing ourselves to also be who we're going to be, not just be who we've been, then we end up hitting the present or the future with the back of our head and we're not ready. So I think that there's that tension in the haggadah of, remember where you came from, you were slaves, you were no one. You were the lowest of the low. And actually there's a debate in the haggadah of where do you begin telling the story? In the section called magid, which is the storytelling part, where do you start the story? And there's a debate between two rabbis who, right, who would’ve thunk that there'd be a debate between two rabbis.
DS: Hahah.
RG: One says you start it with the story of the slavery in Egypt, and the other says, no, you have to start it way, way, way back. Before, when Abraham's father owned an idol store, he owned Idols R’ Us. We were idolaters. And there's the question of why would we start it there? And it's the stereotypical Hollywood answer of, you know, you wanna start the backstory, you gotta start it way back. Right? Like at the Godfather, like he, it starts way back and because then the excitement of where we end up is so much more dramatic. You know, we start the story talking about that we actually used to be idolaters. Like we didn't even understand that there was some one God running the show. We have to remember that we come from a place where we didn't always understand that there was godliness, that there was a rhyme to this reason, and then the story takes off from there. And there are so many different parts. Also, you know, there's one of everybody's favorite songs is Dayenu.
DS: Explain.
RG: Well, Dayenu means it would've been enough for us. I think it's 14 verses of explaining what steps were taken in order to be redeemed. And along the way we keep saying, if God had only done this, it would've been enough. If God had only done. Now, the truth is I don't know that we mean that. We don't mean, if you had just brought us to the tip of the Red Sea but you hadn't opened it up, it would've been enough. I actually think that would've been a big bummer. But what we're trying to say, I think the whole point of the Haggadah is actually, it's this gratitude training workshop. And sometimes in life we have to be able to stop even when we haven't won the whole lottery. And we have to be able to say, I am blessed. I'm blessed right here. And that I think is the message of Dayenu. Is we have be able to stop and acknowledge that maybe we don't have it all, but what we have is a blessing.
DS: There is a line in the Haggadah that feels especially haunting today, which is, and I quote, in every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us. That feels like when you look at the sweep of Jewish history, it's obviously easy to internalize that narrative, but at least before October 7th, you kind of, we all looked at that and said, more or less, I mean, there were incidents obviously before October 7th in the last couple decades, but it didn't feel like, quote unquote, they were rising up against us. And this feels like more than just a narrative that we internalize and recite. You could say it was a prophetic warning. You could say it's a self-fulfilling narrative or self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, how do you think about that line?
RG: It's interesting because I think there's so many lines that we were constantly as parents or educators or peers trying to imagine and create meaning and mash meaning into it. And now given what's happened since October 7th, there's no room for imagination. In fact, I'd like a lobotomy. I, I literally, you know, I'm in therapy now because since Hersh was killed, it's like now there's actually time because during the 330 days that he was stolen, there was no time to do any sort of self-care. So now there's still no time and, but we're doing some self-care. And I said to my therapist, can you give me amnesia? He said, everybody wants it. Everyone who's been through trauma wants amnesia. And you know, and that's what's so painful about this line, is we would have to kind of convince people at the Seder five years ago, ten years ago. We tried to make it into metaphors. You know, it's not that people are coming after us. It’s like, is it a vice? Is it the internet? Is it social media?
DS: Trust me, we, it's so, it's so funny you're saying this because I mean, in retrospect it seems so pathetic. I hadn't thought of it until you just said that, but at a number of my seders before October 7th, we get our kids to talk about pressures they feel, right.
RG: What enslaves you?
DS: Right.
RG: What is making you not be your true self? Okay, well now you know, unfortunately, this is so in your face, so bombastic and it's very complicated to sort of rein it in. I mean, on its most basic surface level. It certainly seems that some sort of force really did their job of rising up against us on October 7th. What I would say is that if someone decides to take that at its face value, then I actually think our answer is that's their job. Our job is to save ourselves.
DS: There's another line in the haggadah I want to ask you about, and I'll quote here. If the holy one blessed be he hadn't brought our fathers out of Egypt, then we and our children would still be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. So there's a lot going on there, but it does feel to some degree, like it's asking us to have a practical here and now attitude to how we see the enslavement. And you said something in a podcast in the 1840 podcast, you said you have to pray like it all depends on God and you have to work like it all depends on you. What did you mean by that?
RG: Well, I learned that from, um, Johnny Moore, Reverend Johnny Moore. I think that that is the prototypical, you know, the Jewish joke of there was a man and he's waiting on the roof of his house because there's a huge flood. He's shouting out to God, saying, save me, save me. And someone comes by with a rowboat and says, get in. And he says, no, no, I'm waiting for God. And then, you know, a helicopter comes with a ladder and says, climb up the ladder. And he says, no, no, I'm waiting for God. And then the flood waters come and they cover him and he dies and he goes up to heaven and he says to God, what the heck? I was shouting out you and praying. And God said, I sent you a boat. I sent you a helicopter. What do you want from me?
DS: Right.
RG: You know? And that is so when, when Johnny Moore said that to me, that is what came to mind is that we have to do both. I, as someone who believes in God, has to do both. I think it would be very unfair to say to someone who doesn't believe in the idea of God, you have to pray to God and you have to work hard. That would be religiously coercive, which would be like telling someone not to do something on Shabbat if they wanted to do something on Shabbat, like drive to you, um, if you were in the north last year. But I really do feel that. I feel that, you know, every morning when I'm praying and I'm praying and I'm crying and I, I'm praying, I, I didn't know. I thought at a certain point I'd run outta tears. And it's unbelievable. And even I went to the dermatologist last week. I said, what is this? He said, you have got to stop crying. Like you just, you, it's like you're, you're like destroying your body. But I can't help it. I can't help it because these, my children are there. Your children are there. My husband is there, your spouse is there. You know, our parents are there. I can't, I can't stop crying and I can't stop working, because I think that we have to do both. And so I think that that's what that line is really talking about. We have to be shouting up and shouting forward and not stopping.
DS: You talked earlier about the four sons. Can you just quickly tick through the four sons, and by the way, just for our listeners, these are the four sons that are described as coming to the Seder in the Haggadah. They're described and they represent four different categories.
RG: You know, there's one that's the wise one, the one that wants to engage and really learn and is curious. They call the second one, the wicked one. I actually think he's just the devil's advocate, or the one who actually is very smart, but may feel a little disenfranchised. We all had that boy in our class, or that girl in our class who was just a little bit too smart. And then there's the simple one who might ask like a very, very basic question. And then there's the one that's just not asking. And it might be that they, that we say they don't know how to ask, it might be what, they're shy, they know how to ask. They're not comfortable. They may be at a table with people they've never met before and they're just not comfortable. And again, these don't have to be children, they're just personality types. They're different types of people and different types of learners.
DS: So the one who does not know how to ask is the one I've been thinking about because there are a lot of young Jews today around the world, especially in diaspora, who are really uncertain of how to engage with their Judaism and their Jewish identity, because it hasn't been the catastrophe that you and the Israelis people have suffered for Jews in the diaspora. But let's just say it's been highly unnerving if you're a Jew living around the world. I interact with a lot of young Jews. I know you interact with a lot of young Jews. I think a lot of those Jews don't know how to ask. They don't know if Judaism is worth the burden, is worth the hassle. So I'm putting all of them in that category in the one who doesn't know how to ask. Because I think people do look to you, 'cause you have provided a lot of wisdom, not just but Jewish wisdom in the face of trauma and human catastrophe that you are personally experiencing. And that not only have you hung onto your Judaism, it's part of what's navigating you to some degree, I think, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, I'm, I'm just actually asking, so what do you say to the Jew who doesn't know how to ask?
RG: Well, first of all, I think I would say I get it. I think sometimes when there is huge tragedy, huge inexplicable pain and suffering, sometimes there's just silence. And we even see that actually there's precedent for that. Aaron, who was Moses' brother in the Bible, his older brother, something happens and both of his sons are killed. In one second he had two sons and they're gone. And his response was silence. And the commentators say sometimes that's the response. Sometimes it's so bad and it's so perplexing and it's so confounding that the only answer is silence. And so I don't blame, yes, we're talking about young people, but I mean anyone, I don't blame anyone saying, I have no idea what is going on. I don't know how to engage and I don't think I wanna engage. I even understand that because the dissonance is so thick. I wake up time and time during the day, I am awake, but I reawaken and I think what is happening? It feels unreal what we're going through. And so I would just, first of all, I would really validate people who feel like they don't even know what to do. I would say, I get it. I also dunno what to do. And then I really do think that there's room to just try to walk in where there are other people who also don't know what to do. Because there's something about being together that can be very affirming. And again, it can be silent. I have noticed this when I get together with these hostage mothers at what is called here (inaudible), which is a gathering, it started out as women wearing white being silent, coming together, and just sitting in the street. Now it's thousands of people, men and women, you don't have to wear white, who come together and just sit because there's been so much shouting and so much crying and so much screaming and so much pain and so much praying and so much rhetoric and so much debate. And finally mothers said, we are just coming together to sit for our children. And wives came for their children and their spouses. And we talk a lot. Obviously the hugest, most urgent critical issue of these 59 people, we know that 24 of them are alive, but we know 35 of them need to come home for proper burial. And when you sit silently, there is power in that silence. And I will also say that is prayer.That is absolutely prayer. And so many people say, oh, I'm not religious. I do this and this and this. I'm not religious. First of all, there's no judgment. None of us are religious and all of us are religious. They're labels. They mean nothing, forget it. But it's such a holy, beautiful, sacred moment when people come together in pain, silent. So I'd encourage people to try to do that. And just to go back for one moment, to talk about the 35 people that have been confirmed dead, who are still being held, who are mothers and sisters and daughters and spouses and sons and brothers, and grandpas and grandmas, you know, actually, and four of them are US citizens, I should say. You know, Itay Chen and Omar Neutra. Gad and Judy. When we were talking about Dayenu before, it will sound so hard to understand, I think. I feel Dayenu that I got to bury Hersh because I have all of these friends now whose children are there. They don't have a place to go. John and I just visited Hersh’s grave last week and we got back in the car and John said, it is so unbelievable and shitty that this is where we have to come to see him. But it's still comforting that we have a place and we are so lucky. And that is how upside down the world is right now. And that's why it's very difficult for me to be going into this holiday because we're actually lucky.
DS: When I speak to American officials, they're often struck when they spend time with hostage families. I've heard this repeatedly. They're struck by, American government officials, by the lengths some families want to go to get their loved ones back to Israel, even if they're dead. And we mentioned Itay Chen, Ruby has said, he said to me, I think he, I think he's said this publicly, so I'm comfortable quoting him, but he, he has said something to me along the lines of, I don't know what I'll do if I'm just told to learn to live with the fact that someday in a rebuilt Gaza, my son's body is buried underneath some skyscraper. And so I've used that line when I've spoken to US officials in, in this administration about why, yes, it's traumatic and awful and every awful word you can come up with to talk about losing someone as a result of October 7th, but it still matters to get them home.
RG: Well, I'll tell you two things on that point. The first thing is that in Judaism, according to our tradition, we feel very strongly that the body is the vessel that holds our neshama, that holds our soul. The soul is what is holy and and sacred and beautiful, and lives eternally, but it is encased in this body while we're in this world. And when the soul leaves the body, when the neshama leaves the body, it's almost like there are these holy vapors that are left in this casing, in this suitcase that's been holding this beautiful God kissed gift that we've had. And so we believe that the body has a holiness to it and has to be treated in a very sacred, specific way. And the way that the body is prepared for burial, according to Jewish law, is very specific and it's very ritualized. And that's what the burial society does. And I actually, for seven years, when we lived in Berkeley, California, I was part of the burial society. And I used to prepare women who had died. I would prepare their bodies for their burial. And there's a way that you wash the body and that you dress the body in certain burial shrouds. So this is also, it's that we feel that it is the ultimate chesed, it's the ultimate act of loving kindness that you can do for someone, is once their soul has left their body is that you give them a proper burial. This is a tenant of our belief system. So it's not just this idea of, oh, I want my child's body back. It's ingrained in the DNA of who we are. That's number one. The other thing I will tell you, and this is extremely, I think, complicated for people to hear, is when we were burying Hersh, right before we went to bury him, the men who had prepared Hersh's body, I didn't know this happened. They came and they asked John if they could talk to him for a minute. So I was waiting in the car and John went with these people and I didn't know what he did, and I only found out that night. He said they took him into the van where they had Hersh. They said, we want you to look at his face and identify him. Now, they unwrapped his face because we have burial shrouds. So he was wrapped, we, and in Jerusalem, in most of Israel, but in Jerusalem, you don't bury people in coffins. You bury them just wrapped in burial shrouds. And the men are wearing wrapped in a, uh, a tallit, a prayer shawl. So they unwrap this little shawl and they unwrap the shroud that was covering his face. And they showed John Hersh’s face. And I said to John, I'm so sorry you had to do that, but I'm so glad that you did, because I don't think I'd believe it if you hadn't seen him. And he said, Rachel, I saw him and I don't believe it. And so what I'm telling you is that it's incredibly important. People will never believe it because would you ever wanna believe that your son was gone? So even these people who are told your daughter died on October 7th, they have her body. Your grandmother, your mother, your wife, she died on whatever date, and they have her body. Human vitality and resilience and optimism makes it so we don't wanna believe that that's true. And so that's another, yet another reason why we need these people back. Aside from the fact that it's part of our religious tradition, it's also just a psychological way of saying you have your person, here's where they now are. You can go and visit this place. And I had a rabbi contact me who both his parents were Auschwitz survivors. And he told me, he said, first of all, part of why this has been so horrific for you is that your son was a Holocaust survivor who was then killed, which was a very intriguing way of describing Hersh.
DS: Wow.
RG: Someone else asked me recently, we were in America and someone said, oh, I heard you are the daughter of Holocaust survivors. How does it feel that your son went through this horrible experience? And I said, well, my mother was born in Detroit and my father was born in Gary, Indiana. So I'm actually not a Holocaust survivor, uh, child, but what I am is the parent of a Holocaust survivor. And that really is what I feel like. I feel that Hersh survived the Holocaust. He did every single thing right and then he was killed. And those beautiful five who were with him also, they did every single thing right. They were Holocaust survivors and then they were killed. But I understand from this rabbi, he was saying, until each of his parents died, many, many years after the Holocaust, he said they never were able to move forward. They never had a place to go. Their parents had both been killed, all their siblings were killed. One of his parents had been married and had children before who were killed in the Holocaust before. These things are extremely important for how do we move forward? How do we move forward, not just the 59 families? How do we as a people, as a nation, as a species, move forward when we know that this horrific thing happened, and we know that these people are being held as bargaining chips, people who are alive, and the people who were killed and taken in order to torment their families.
DS: I want to ask you about that because this is your second Passover without Hersh. The last one, he was alive, but he was taken hostage and this Passover, he's dead. Just last year's Seder, and I guess I could ask the same question about how you're approaching this Seder. When you look at the words on the page, when you look at the haggadah, it's one thing to read it as you said, like although it's just a normal ritual, it's another thing to read it when it feels like for you, time stopped, you sit at the Seder table, you, is it like you're just going through the motions? 'cause like you have to, 'cause you're an observant Jew. Or are you like, give me a break. How do I do this? How do we, because you take ideas seriously. You take religious ideas seriously, and this is a story of religious ideas and religious and Jewish history. And you're looking at it and you're like, ah, what do I do with this?
RG: Well, last year and this year we will also be with them. Our closest dearest friends are Rabbi Rob and Kami Khan and Rob, Rabbi Rob, is a very wise, sensitive, compassionate person who in the most elegant way made last year's Seder exactly what it needed to be. And so it was extremely delicately orchestrated. We did exactly what we had to do and not more. We all cried. There was not one person at the Seder who did not cry. Uh, the Kahn family was there and, um, our cousins, Elliot and Rebecca and their children were there, and all of us were sobbing and we were all very aware that Hersh was in Egypt, in slavery, in bondage, and we were as well. And it was very real and it was very beautiful and it was excruciating. And that is what it was supposed to be. And I think the difference this year, obviously, that Hersch is now never gonna be at a Seder with us again in this world, the fact that he's dead is obviously the hugest difference. But last year there were two things. First of all, we had hope that he was going to come home and that that was just gonna be the only year that we were ever without Hersh at Seder. But the second thing is we were guessing about the torment he was enduring. And all of the sudden, what has become extremely difficult for me, especially in these last few weeks, is with the recently released hostages coming home and their testimony, we now know what they are going through, and it is horrific. It is not digestible. It is true insanity to listen to Eli Sharabi describing what he went through to listen to Or Levy, to listen to Eliya Cohen, to listen to these young women who were released, who were in the room next to Matan Angrest. To now know that is very different to now know that Alone Ohel is by himself with shrapnel in his eye. He can't see out of one of his eyes. It's in one of his hands. He was on his way to music school. He's a talented pianist. To know that he's by himself, to know that Matan Angrest now has an arm that's completely lame because it was so badly damaged in the torment that he's endured, that his face is no longer symmetrical, that he sounds catatonic when he's speaking. That you have Eviyatar David, who you as a glasses wearer can appreciate. They took his glasses away. He's blind without his glasses. He can't see anything. He and his best friend Guy Gilboal-Dalal. Guy is deaf in one ear now. We know this, that those two boys are being held with bags on their head 24/7. They don't even eat without the bags on their heads. They don't see what they're given to eat. All of them are in shackles, shackles, chains, all of them. How do we digest this going into this Seder? And that's where I realize the torture that the parents are going through of the 24 hostages who we know are still alive, that torture, even I have never experienced because we didn't know. When Hersh was being held, we didn't know. There were people in the intelligence world here and in America who did know. They were privy to that. They didn't share that with the families. And we now know because hostages are coming home and Yarden Bibas is describing what he went through and what he saw. And Tal Shoham is explaining to the parents of Eviyatar and Guy what he saw when he was with them.
DS: Keith Siegel saying that he, they made him watch them sexually torturing a female hostage.
RG: Yes. Yes. So now that we know, that makes it all the more impossible to wrap our minds around. How do we pretend that, okay, it's Pesach, it's Passover. Let's all have a great Seder. And I am so conflicted about it. And even coming to talk to you today about this, I was really trepidatious and John said to me, no, go and talk to Dan and go and tell everyone you are to have a terrible, terrible Seder. Make sure you cry at that Seder, every single one of you, or you have not fulfilled your obligation as having seen yourself as having been in Egypt like Eviyatar and like Edan, and like Tamir, and like David and like Ariel and like Alon and like Matan Zangauker. This year, you know, we normally dip a hard boiled egg into salt water. One of the symbols that's on the Seder plate is an egg for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's used to remind us of one of the sacrifices that was given that was roasted, but also an egg is a symbol of life. And it's, you know, circular, uh, life death symbol. And saltwater is of course, reminding us of the tears that the Jewish people were crying when they were in this horrible bondage and affliction. And so we dip the egg into the water. This year, I think we should pass the salt water around, and everybody should take a sip of the tears that we should all be tasting and crying. And also because Tal Shoham said that the water that they got every day, that was only a half a cup of water, he said it was salt water.
DS: In Gaza when they're being held hostage.
RG: When he was being held hostage, he was just released.
DS: Yeah.
RG: You know, during this phase, the deal that we had of the 33 that started, um, in January. He said the water tastes like salt water. It's either that it's filled with iron, it's not clean or that it's actual salt water. He said it was almost impossible to swallow it, but when it's all that you have, you force yourself. And I feel like we should all be forcing ourselves to have one sip of what these people are drinking daily. While we are at our seders, they will be in a dank, dark dungeons tunnel having nothing except maybe their tears.
DS: Rachel I wanna close by talking about some of these hostages that have been freed, that you have spent time with, which you've told me a little bit about some of whom were with Hersh. How did those encounters shape your own journey? Learning from them about their time with Hersh, how has that shaped your own understanding of the journey you've been on?
RG: So we were very blessed that Or Levy, who was in the same bomb shelter as Hersh and on the same pickup truck that Hersh was on the, uh, UN pickup truck that he was kidnapped in. Or was released with Elli Shabi and Ohad Benami, and he actually asked to meet us. We had heard he was released on a Saturday and um, on day 491 and his brother Mihael. Michael, who we had gotten to know throughout this struggle because we went to Rome together and we were at various advocacy events with him. He actually called John right after Shabbat on that Saturday of day 491, and he said, I just wanna let you know that when I hugged Or, one of the very first things he asked me is, how is Hersh? And he said he would like a few days and then he would like to meet you. And so on day 496, John and I went to the hospital where, or was being kept. Obviously he was in really terrible shape. Those were the three, uh, men who came out looking truly like they had been released from a concentration camp or is about John's height. John's six feet tall and or weighed 50 kilo when we met him, which I think is about 110 pounds. It was so godly meeting him. It was meeting someone who really, it felt like I was meeting someone who returned from the dead. He has a beautiful spirit. He turned to us. I, I assumed we were gonna talk to him in Hebrew. And God bless him as we walked into this room. Just the three of us. He didn't want anyone else there. He turns to me and he says, would you like me to speak in English? And I said in Hebrew, oh no, it's okay. We could speak in Hebrew. It's good for me to practice. And he says, in gorgeous English, I really have good English. And John said, great, let's speak in English. And he told us about the kidnapping itself and being in the truck and all of these mysterious black holes that we didn't know about and that we were always guessing about. He was able to fill in a lot of information for us. So he explained to us that when they went in to, and I'm leaving a lot out, but I'm sharing some, when they pulled into Gaza and the truck was surrounded by thousands of Gazans who were beating them with two by fours and throwing shoes at them and all sorts of things, that Hersh was covered completely in a blanket and taken off the truck, which led the others in the truck to believe that Hersh had bled out from his injury, from his arm, and that he had died. And that's why they thought that they had taken Hersh. On day 52, Hersh ended up in the same tunnel as Or Levy, Eliya Cohen and Eli Sharabi. And Or and Hersh started to talk. They didn't recognize each other because there was so much pandemonium in chaos, and there was no time in the bomb shelter to say, oh, hi, my name's Rachel. I'm from Chicago. Where are you from? You know, there was no chit chat. It was total pandemonium. 18 people were killed. Hersh's hand got blown off, which, Or was the one who told us his hand got blown off while he was holding a grenade trying to throw it out. We had never known that. We knew his forearm had been blown off, but we didn't know how. He said when they realized who each other was, they jumped up and they hugged each other, which also was really meaningful to me because when I hugged Or, I realized Or is the last living person who touched Hersh. And so when I touch Or, and I've seen him again since then, I feel the remnants of my Hersh. And he told us how Hersh had said this line from Viktor Frankl of when you have a why, you will figure out a how. When you have a why you will figure out a how. And so for Or you know, he said like you have a why you have a son. You have to figure out how you're getting outta here 'cause you've got a lot to live for. And Eli Sharabi subsequently told us that Hersh also said that line to him. And Eliya Cohen said, he said that line to that he was constantly saying it. And what's so intriguing for me is when Hersh left that tunnel, three days later, those men continued saying that line every single day. And they would talk about with each other what's our why, what's gonna get us through for the next 450 days. And he said, the last day I said it was Saturday morning when I woke up on day 491. And he said, when I'm strong enough, 'cause this was day 496, he said, I'm getting it tattooed on my arm. And when I saw him last week, he saw me from across the room and he said, like this. And he goes like this. And he shows me. And here in English, he has the sentence that Hersh was quoting from Viktor Frankl. And he had it tattooed on his arm in English, which is like a wink to Hersh, right? So a lot has been filled in because I kept thinking maybe Hersh was broken. Like he had seen 18 people murdered in front of his eyes, including his beloved dear friend, Aner Shapira in front of him, blown up. He had his own arm blown off. I thought maybe he broke. But what I found out from these, these men who were with him, he wasn't broken. He was giving them encouragement with this line, but not just that, but Or told us Hersh was laughing. Hersh was joking. And a lot of other information. And the other thing he told us, which gave us great comfort is he said, Ori Danino was with Hersh from day one. Ori Danino is the one who made sure that Hersh was okay because Hersh was not treated as we thought. On the first day, Hersh was bleeding to death. And on the third day when he was basically almost dead, Ori Danino got him, he was screaming at the captors saying he's gonna die and he's worth so much more alive. He's American. You gotta get him treated. And he ended up getting treated in a hospital, a real surgery, and he was with Ori from day one until day 328, when he was killed with Ori next to him on his left. And Or told us the whole time that they were together for those days in that tunnel when they overlapped in the same tunnel, he said he and Ori were like brothers. He said they were together next to each other the entire time. That gives me tremendous comfort because when Hersh was found on day three 30, he was found on Eden Yerushalmi. They were face to face. And on his left was Ori Danino. And in a world that's broken, that's comfort.
DS: All right. Uh, maybe I'll just ask you one last question 'cause I really don't know how to say goodbye to you right now. Because normally every other person, every other Jew I speak to these days, I say wishing people literally happy holiday. What are people saying to you these days? In the lead up to Pesach? What do you say? What should I say to you now?
RG: Exactly.
DS: Tell me how to talk to you right now.
RG: How about we should all have a meaningful Pesach, we should all have a Pesach that, you know, that each of the holidays has a nickname and Pesach has called chag ha herut, which means the holiday of freedom. There is still time, Dan, there is still time in has, in the Hasidic tradition, there's this saying that you wish people to have things in the blink of an eye, and we've seen it happen. We've seen in these last 548 days, things do happen in the blink of an eye, and this can change. We don't know what's gonna happen in these next few days. There can be a decision that, you know what? We're getting these 59 people back and it will happen. When there is a will to make it happen, it will happen. So I pray for all of us, a true holiday of freedom, a true holiday of meaning, and a true time of figuring out what is our why? What is our why? And then we will figure out the how.
DS: Thank you Rachel.
RG: Thanks Dan.
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