Thoughts on Passover
(Published in The Outreach, April 2005)
The Outreach is the newsletter of Valley Outreach Synagogue, Reseda, California
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Recently I read an extraordinary book, Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. This thin book offered such weighty lessons in the art of living.
Frankl, a preeminent psychologist and founder of the school of logotherapy survived three years at Auschwitz, Dachau, and other concentration camps.
His account of Nazi slavery and persecution and his introduction to the principles of logotherapy served as a profoundly appropriate preparation for Pesach.
How can someone living in our free society in this year of creation possibly say, "This year we are slaves; next year may we all be free", with conviction?
We know not the misery of lost liberty. Yet, our tradition requires us to say, "Avadim Ha-ee-inu – We were all slaves to Pharoah in Egypt."
It seems incomprehensible that only sixty years ago, we were indeed enslaved; stripped of everything that identified us as human beings.
I cannot imagine that the Egyptian slavery of the Hagaddah was nearly as evil or abysmal as that perpetrated by the Nazis. However deplorable and cruel it was, its purpose was fundamentally different.
It was concerned with labor; not annihilation.
One of the remarkable points that Frankl makes in his book is that suffering is a condition placed upon us and not that which defines us.
Even those, like himself, who lost all recognizable freedoms still retained the God given ability, or freedom, to face their condition with
dignity and to live their lives with purpose beyond mere survival. In that most miserable of human conditions, Frankl witnessed those who succumbed
and others who refused to allow their unthinkable circumstances to debase their morals and to destroy the dignity that would ultimately sustain them.
Even in Auschwitz, there were those who refused to see themselves as victims.
May the coming of Passover renew your gratitude for all that enriches your life.
Cantor Ron Li-Paz
