[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 82 (Friday, May 1, 2020)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E415]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                RABBI ZOBERMAN'S REFLECTIONS ON PASSOVER

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                          HON. ELAINE G. LURIA

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, May 1, 2020

  Mrs. LURIA. Madam Speaker, I include in the Record, at the request of 
a Virginia Beach constituent, Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman, of Temple Lev 
Tikvah and is a reflection of his views:

       ``At the heart of the Passover Seder is the haunting 
     probing of `Ma Nishtana . . . How different is this night 
     from all other nights?' This historical Rabbinic quest is 
     designed to grasp Passover's meaning throughout the 
     generational chain in the context of changing and always 
     challenging times. It is traditionally sung by the youngest 
     attending child, to mitigate the seriousness of the inquiry 
     surrounding the complex poles of enslavement and freedom in 
     the Jewish consciousness as well as human experience. Surely 
     at this beclouded Passover Festival, the plague of the 
     Coronavirus is casting ominous darkness not only on one 
     people as with the punitive Ten Plagues upon Pharaoh's Egypt 
     for freedom's sake and slavery's denouncement. Pharaoh was 
     forewarned time and again to let Moses' people go. Now we 
     face a global attack by a stealthy adversary exposing the 
     entire interdependent human family to the Angel of Death's 
     whims. All that in the midst of a complacent post-modern high 
     technology society. We are tempted by the hubris of false 
     invincibility, plunging us to a debilitating sense of 
     primeval vulnerability, threatening our accustomed and 
     enviable American way of life and its underlying essential 
     democracy.
       Ultimately the Passover celebration is a poignant reminder 
     that enslavement in its destructive variety--physically, 
     spiritually and psychologically--is bound to be overcome by 
     the light of deliverance, replacing virus with virtue, pain 
     with promise and violence with vision.
       At this season's Seder table, those who are fortunate to 
     safely conduct it, should diminish from the cup of joyful 
     salvation in addition to the ten drops for the ten plagues 
     upon ancient Egypt for the sin of Hebrew enslavement, one 
     drop for the current heavy human loses and intense suffering. 
     The inspiring Exodus journey from servitude to an oppressor 
     to service of The Most High, became a model of liberation for 
     the human family, culminating in the Messianic vision of a 
     world transformed.
       We have chosen to convert the bitter herbs of our exile 
     into the sweet charoset of homecoming for all. It is the 
     symbolic hovering presence at the Seder table of the prophet 
     Elijah for whom we open the door and set aside a special cup 
     of wine, which provides for the eternal flame of universal 
     shalom's healing, hope and harmony. It is the peace we have 
     kept alive as a flickering light in history's darkness.
       Passover's promise by a compassionate heritage is 
     ultimately rooted in its revolutionary view of the infinite 
     worth of each of the Creator's children, recalling that God 
     silenced the heavenly angels when jubilant at the drowning of 
     Pharaoh's troops. Passover's soaring spirit of renewal of a 
     people as well as an individual, also applies to the natural 
     order of springtime's reassuring return with the beauty of 
     the Earth's budding and recovery that we are pledged to 
     forever secure.''

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