April 18, 2025
When we sing Chad Gadya, The Only Goat, at Debra’s family Seder, it is our tradition to take on the parts of the different animals and symbols of the song and do something that represents that symbol. Every year, we call Debra’s closest friend from college, who now lives in California, and we get a toilet flush for the water sound. For several years, I have taken on the role of the fire, where I shuffle my Spotify playlist called “Fire Seder Songs” which includes the word “fire” in the lyrics of each song. The playlist includes songs like Alicia Keyes, This Girl is on Fire, Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark, Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire, Adele’s Set Fire to the Rain, and more (I am happy to take recommendations to add!). As we do every year, we sang Chad Gadya and concluded our seder. Upon waking up the next morning, that moment of fun and celebration turned to sadness as I learned of the fire set by an arsonist to the Pennsylvania Governor’s mansion in the room where Gov. Josh Shapiro celebrated his family’s seder.
Whether we consider this act an act of terror, political violence, antisemitism, or all three, I cannot help but be drawn to the image below in which there are several words from the burned family Haggadah that managed to survive. On the right-hand page, is the transliteration of Hatikvah, our people’s national anthem. The specific words that jump out are Od lo avda tikvateinu which translates to “our hope is not yet lost.” If there is any sentiment or value that truly embodies the Jewish people, it is hope, in Hebrew Tikvah; a word we know all too well in our congregation. Yehuda Amichai once wrote that we are a people infected with hope and thank God for that. Hope is what keeps us alive in challenging times. Having lived through countless instances of turmoil and hate, hope has enabled us to survive. It has been the source of our vision for the future as we have imagined and reimagined our Jewish faith. It has been a kav, that we have tied to the future and forged a plan to take us forward. It has been a mikveh, a pool that has sustained us and given us life when we feel everything is lost. Our hope is not yet lost and as long as a Jewish person walks on earth, hope will sustain us.
The other line emerges from the left-hand side of the page, where it says the Little Goat. A reference to Chad Gadya. As I mentioned earlier, it is a fun song, and some say it was included in the Seder as a way to keep young people engaged. However, according to Rabbi Dr. Raphel Zarum, Dean of the London School of Jewish Studies, who wrote in a 2019 article for The Jewish Chronicle, this melody and every animal or object in it symbolizes something larger. The goat represents the Jewish people facing oppression. The cat, an ancient symbol of Egypt; the dog, the Assyrian and Babylonian empires that employed dogs to hunt; the stick is the Persian empire, and so on. Every symbol reflects some entity that tried to overtake us. At the end of the song, God appears and saves us. The song is a metaphorical version of the poem V’hi sheamda in every generation they rise up to kill us but, in every generation, God saves us from their hand.
The question we ask is how does God save us? It is through the telling of stories. God commands us to tell the story of Passover, and with that telling comes the command to remember. We remember our journey out of Egypt; we remember the journey after the destruction of the temple, after the expulsion from Spain; we remember the pogroms; the Holocaust. In every generation we remember the moments of blessing that emerged from the darkness. Those moments are part of the story. Gov. Shapiro said, “Northing the assailant could do would deter me from my job as governor, nothing he could do would deter me from proudly and openly practicing my faith.” It is that resolve that lives within us. Through all the turmoil, we have strengthened our souls. I am always reminded in these moments of the words of Israeli graffiti artist the Yiddish Feminist who said, “Our wounds are centuries old, but so are our strength and resilience.” May these words ring in our hearts and souls and give us the resolve to move forward in times of darkness.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Rick Kellner