“Make new friends but keep the old; one is silver and the other is gold.” I met one of my best friends from high school for coffee in New York last week. It was great. I still like her and it’s still so wonderful to hear what she’s doing and thinking and share with her what I’m doing and thinking. It’s been over 30 years since we graduated from high school. Wow! How did that happen?
Every year I look forward to Passover as though, similarly, it were a date with an old friend. I don’t know whether it’s the Exodus and the Biblical characters who feel like the old friends, or the Rabbis whose stories and wisdom are part of the Haggadah who feel like the old friends. Maybe it’s the special dishes which we used every year in my mother’s house for Seder and which I now use to set my table for the Seder every spring. Maybe it’s the foods and the rituals or the hand-made items my children made in early elementary school that get pulled out of the storage boxes and carried upstairs. Probably it’s all of that and more that makes it feel like a get-together with an old friend. It’s been over 3000 years since we left Egypt. Wow! How did that happen?
And like my coffee date with my high school friend, Nina, I enjoy hearing what the holiday has to say to me every year and what I, in turn, have to say to the holiday. This year, as we watch popular uprisings taking place all over the Middle East and witness people fighting for greater freedom, we are offered a new perspective on the value of freedom. This year, as we grieve with the people of Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami, we are offered a new perspective on empathy for those whose lives are made hard. This year as my children grow older and more independent (driving – yikes), I am offered a new perspective on how hard it can be to “let my people go”. Yes, sometimes I even identify with Pharaoh as I retell this powerful story.
Every year the Seder introduces me to my former selves and makes me a little more aware of my current self. Because every year the Seder is a chance to re-connect with what is familiar and cherished and to find new connections with what is challenging and what I may have overlooked. I wish each and every one of you the same pleasurable reunion as you celebrate this coming Passover.
Batyah's Blackboard
President's Message -- Sol Goldenberg
Thank you to everyone who participated in the March Madness 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament. David Hellman did a wonderful job organizing it with the help of Mike Elstien. It's great to see so many members and friends of the JCK jumping in to help make this event the success it was.
I would like to wish everyone a Happy Passover.
Ed Libs
MARCH 2011
As I have been listening to events in Egypt, I have thought about the difference between a country like Egypt which represses its citizenry and a country like the United States where we have considerable freedom of expression without fear.
The Copts are one of the ancient branches of Christianity. In Egypt they make up 10% of the population. On the whole they are a repressed minority.
But everyone in Egypt under the authoritarian regimes is oppressed, unless they have connections with the power structure. People live in fear constantly.
Years ago I hired a Copt employee who told me that when he stepped off the airplane at JFK airport, he felt freedom. In Egypt he had lived with the fear as do people in all totalitarian countries of the secret police.
An interesting reflection of the difference between our country and a totalitarian country is the difference between the responsibilities of the government departments with the name Interior. In the United States, the Department of the Interior is responsible for land use in the country. It is responsible for mining, cattle grazing, forest preservation and other such uses. In totalitarian countries the Ministry of the Interior is responsible for keeping order and repressing political opposition and the rights of citizens. It frequently involves beating and torturing citizens, imprisoning them and even killing them. By and large most of the Arabs countries have had that kind of ministry that their citizens live in fear of.
