In Any Language
Putting away our Pesach dishes and tearing off the enormous amounts of duct tape and aluminum foil from around my kitchen, I reflected on how long we spend preparing for Pesach and how fast it goes by.
I am always saddened when one of the Holidays comes to its end and this time was no different. Weeks of cleaning and scrubbing the house. Many trips to Walmart and other stores to pick up sundry items. Stops at various establishments for matzah, wine, clothing etc. One week later and it’s all a distant memory. Or is it? Is there something I can take with me (besides the weight gain) beyond the holiday that can keep the positive experience of the past week extant for a while longer? In fact, there is.
One of the things that my children do, as I did when I was growing up and many people do all over the world, is say the “Mah Nishtanah” in different languages. It was always with a sense of pride when I was able to say it in Yiddish. Of course I didn’t know a lick of Yiddish as a child. For all I knew I could have been reciting the Afghanistan national anthem, but boy did I feel cool! My sister learned it in Spanish and French. My brother said it in Russian one year (at least that’s the language he claimed it was). A foster brother of mine was from Iran and he said it in Farsi. Another boy who loved with us came from Hungary and he did it in Hungarian. And now the tradition continues with my kids, always trying to say it in a different language. In fact, it’s more of a surprise when one of the kids actually says it in the original Hebrew!
I was wondering to myself how this universal “custom” got started in the first place. My guess is that it was probably just a cute way to get the children more enthusiastic about participating at the Seder. However, maybe there is a deeper symbolism we can attach to it. That symbolism is that all over the world, in every country, in every language and throughout 3000 years of history, millions of my Jewish brothers and sisters have sat at their own Seder tables and asked the same questions as my children in 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio.
Some of those brothers were sitting in comfortable homes in Israel or in Europe. Others were in a dank cellar in Spain hiding from the Inquisition, or even in a concentration camp. Some had plentiful amounts of festive food at their table; others could barely get some potato scraps. In all instances there is one common denominator. Once a year (or twice outside of Israel) Jews of all stripes, nationalities and languages sat down as a family to pass along the tradition of how we evolved into a nation by the grace of a loving and benevolent Father in heaven.
As a child I was a link in this amazing chain of transmission and now that I am a father I continue to be a link in the chain as a “giver,” no longer the “recipient.” That thought gives me a mixture of feelings. A feeling of pride to be a member of the tribe that is
G-d’s chosen people. A feeling of an awesome responsibility that I have to keep that chain intact and unbroken. A feeling of gratitude to G-d for all He has done for us in the past and in the present. A feeling of thanks that I can sit with my family around the table and share such a wonderful time together year after year.
While it’s true that the aluminum foil and duct tape has been discarded and the last crumbs of matzah have been swept away, those feelings I experienced at the Seder and throughout Pesach will hopefully remain with me long after.
Perhaps next year we will all merit to be sitting together at the Seder in Israel reciting the Mah Nishtanah in Hebrew in fulfillment of our supplication at the conclusion of the Seder – next year in Jerusalem!
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Yosef Koval
