By Rabbi Howard Avruhm Addison
Maturity and Liberation
The Shabbat before Pesakh is known in Jewish tradition as Shabbat HaGadol, literally “The Great Sabbath.” The name and origin of this observance has been subject to no little debate. Many say the Shabbat’s name, “HaGadol,” is derived from the concluding verses of its Haftarah (prophetic reading). There the prophet Malachi calls for generational reconciliation to avert universal disaster and as a prelude to Elijah heralding Final Redemption on the “Eternal’s (YHWH’s) Great (ha-Gadol) and Awesome Day” (Malachi 3:23-4). On the Shabbat immediately before Pesakh, we anticipate celebrating God’s first redemptive act, the Exodus from Egypt, while awaiting the as yet-to-be attained ultimate salvation.[1]
Other interpretations connect the name, “HaGadol,” to the length and/or subject matter of the day’s homily. To prepare their communities for the Seder, rabbis would expound at great length the laws of Pesakh and/or the Haggadah’s recounting of the Exodus. Thus, the Sabbath’s name plays on the alliteration of ha-Gadol and Haggadah.[2]
There is another explanation that I believe speaks more directly to the uncertainty and challenges we face this year, challenges that began before Pesakh and, we fear, will continue into the foreseeable future. As an adjective, the Hebrew word gadol means “big,” “great” or “grand”; when used as a noun it denotes one who has come of age, an adult, as opposed to a katan, a minor. Thus, Shabbat HaGadol celebrates the collective B’nai Mitzvah of our Israelite ancestors, when they first shed their slave-like subservience and functioned as grown women and men.[3]
Like current practice, our Hebrew forebears also had mitzvah projects to perform. According to Exodus 12, these fell into two related categories. The first involved open civil disobedience: publicly securing the paschal lamb on Nisan 10 (according to tradition, the Shabbat four days before the first Erev Pesakh[4]) then slaughtering it, painting its blood on one’s doorposts and lintel, roasting it over an open flame and, if your family’s lamb was too big, inviting the neighbors in to share the feast. The second was the reaffirmation of Brit Milah (Covenant of Circumcision) to ensure that all males eating of the lamb were circumcised and had entered into the Covenant of Abraham. The performance of these mitzvot was so crucial to Israel’s liberation that the Torah portrays parents telling their future children, “ … because of this (eating the Paschal Offering with matzah and bitter herbs and the Covenant of Circumcision) the Eternal acted on my behalf by taking me out of Egypt.” (Exodus13:8)[5]
How different is this year?
On Pesakh two years ago, few of us imagined the conditions we now face in the United States and the world. Each day brings new assaults on truth, civil liberty and the rule of law, defying those constitutional checks and balances that have yet to be neutered. Executive Orders bulldoze institutional guardrails, the social safety net is being shredded, and trade wars, with ever-changing parameters and consequences, are launched. Simultaneously, foreign dictators are befriended, support for allies is threatened and conspiracy theorists are empowered.
Watching legal residents being hustled off street corners and sent across country or deported without due legal process or a judicial conviction challenges our past naivete. How many of us read Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism[6] or Martin Niemöller’s poem, “First They Came,”[7] and were confident that such things couldn’t happen here, in the “Land of the Free”? To be clear, conditions in America today differ from those Arendt and Niemöller experienced in the 1930’s and 40’s: Currently, no death camps have been established nor is America directly fighting wars of territorial conquest. However, amid the rising autocratic concentration of power (“He who saves the country does not violate any Law”[8]), current conditions are not different enough.
As Jews, much of our worldview was upended on Oct. 7, 2023. The extent of Hamas’s cruelty towards those murdered, raped and taken hostage, coupled with the Israeli government’s lack of preparedness and contribution to the conditions that precipitated the attack, have yet to be fully revealed. As the remaining hostages’ fate lies in the balance, even life-long Zionists with family ties to Israel can’t but wonder what constitutes legitimate self-defense when the Gazan war continues unabated. Israel cuts off food and medical supplies to civilians. Aid workers and journalists are attacked, while police and the military give settler vandals free reign to terrorize Palestinian civilians on the West Bank.[9]
Domestically, our reality has also been turned upside down. Previous political allies attacked Israel before it even responded militarily; universities long hospitable to our academic aspirations and participation left swaths of Jewish students and faculty feeling unsafe by not uniformly enforcing their own rules governing campus protest and protections. Conversely, those who had shown scant interest in Jewish welfare or worse, who platform White Nationalist Antisemites, now present themselves our defenders. They label as antisemitic even peaceful questioning of the Netanyahu government’s excesses in Gaza and the West Bank, let alone its vilification of hostage families and lawful protest. They place us in the middle, speciously using our well-being as the wedge to attack ethnic groups and constitutionally protected rights (i.e., academic and journalistic freedom) they hate even more than us.[10]
‘Four Questions’ … plus one
It’s hard to overemphasize how essential “questioning” is to our observance of Pesakh. Based on a homonymous root, a Hebrew sobriquet for matzah, Leḥem O(Ah)ni, “Bread of Affliction.” can also mean “Bread of Response,” a food that prompts many questions and diverse answers.[11] The Four Questions, often recited by the youngest attending a Seder, merely initiates our inquiry into the details of Passover. The entirety of the Seder, replete with singing and storytelling, feasting, and a panoply of ritual foods and acts, calls us to reflect on the nature of enslavement and freedom and where we now fall on that spectrum, individually and collectively.
Shortly before Pesakh, I spoke to my spiritual director about my tangled feelings and fears for the future as our “Season of Freedom,” (Zeman ῌeiruteinu) drew near. She assured me that many she counsels, regardless of religious affiliation, are now reporting their versions of this same dilemma. She then suggested I contemplate a single question, one that engaged me all during Pesakh and, I’m sure, will condition my thinking for many months ahead. I now pose her question to you: At this historical juncture, what is mine to do?
The answer will obviously differ for each of us depending on outlook, life circumstance, talent and interests, spheres of influence and openness or aversion to risk. As time goes on, as we and “the situation” both change, our answers could well differ whenever we revisit this question. Certainly, there is no “one size fits all” response to this existential query. However, let me suggest two principles to guide your deliberations:
- I was no longer of the opinion that one can simply be a bystander. — Hannah Arendt [12]
Few of us will have Arendt’s clarity and courage to document lawless outrages, to shelter and later rescue the persecuted, to twice face arrest and to emigrate twice. That doesn’t mean, however, that there’s nothing one can do — be it contributing, attending demonstrations, signing petitions, calling, meeting and/or writing to elected officials, as well as joining in organizing efforts. As Jews we have a unique responsibility not to stand by silently, given our history, religious teachings, the current Middle East situation and given that our interests are spuriously cited to legitimate attacks on others. The intergenerational question upon which the Seder is based grows more urgent daily: “When your descendants ask what is this?”[13] What testimony and action responses will you relate to them?
- Over the past years, many have adopted the custom of replacing the shank bone on the Seder plate with a beet or a sweet potato (the “Paschal Yam”). Fully recognizing the moral imperatives of vegetarianism and with no desire to revive the Temple’s sacrificial cult, our times call for re-evaluation. As we move beyond Pesakh, we must acknowledge this is not a time for sublimation, for a “fluffy or candied yam” response. Like the mitzvot of Circumcision and the Paschal Lamb required prior to the Exodus, what is unfolding today is real and raw. Even if not yet directly affected, we see the lives of others, together with aspects of our democracy, figuratively scorched and roasted by the flames. The challenge of Shabbat HaGadol continues, as uncomfortable as it might become; there is no liberation without some real-world sacrifice.
And we rise …
Much of our Pesakh preparation centers around the questions of ḥametz and matzah. Ritually, we are bidden to remove all leavened foods from our possessions; during the festival, we’re not allowed to see, let alone own or eat them. Since the leavening process involves fermentation, we’re also called to spiritually examine our hearts’ dark corners and rid ourselves of sour attitudes and tendencies towards self-inflation. The flat, unseasoned matzah has become a, if not the, primary Jewish symbol of humility.
There is, however, a difference between humility and self-effacement. Judaism’s Mussar movement speaks of humility (anavah) as being “right-sized,” to find the proper balance between one’s own needs and the needs of others, be they individuals, the community or society as a whole. As Alan Morinis, an eminent Mussar teacher, succinctly states, humility is “No more than my space [but] no less than my place.”[14] While self-inflation is never a good thing, we now run the greater risk of excessive timidity, of flattening ourselves submissively in the face of increasing governmental pressure. As we move from Pesach to Shavuot and beyond, eliminating ḥametz isn’t our most pressing issue; it’s whether we’re willing and able to rise to the occasion.[15]
Notes
[1] Rabbi Yehoshua says: “In Nissan … the bondage of our ancestors ceased in Egypt; and in Nissan we will be redeemed in time to come.” BT Rosh Hashanah 11a.
[2] For a compendium on the origins of Shabbat HaGadol see David Golinkin. Responsa in a Moment, Vol. 16, No. 4 April 2022. Retrieved from https://schechter.edu/why-is-the-shabbat-before-pesah-called-shabbat-hagadol/
[3] Chizkuni (ῌezkiah ben Manoaḥ, 13th-century France) on Exodus 12:3. Later amplified in the Peri Hadash (ῌezkiah de Silva, 17th-century Italy) and in the Sefat Emet (Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, 19th- to 20th-century Poland) Shabbat Hagadol 5674.
[4] Golinkin, op. cit.
[5] See the commentaries of Rashi (11th- to 12th-century France) and ibn Ezra (11th- to 12th-century Spain) on Exodus 13:8.
[6] Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968.
[7] Retrieved from https://hmd.org.uk/resource/first-they-came-by-pastor-martin-niemoller/
[8] Donald Trump’s self-referencing quote of Napolean Bonaparte. Truth Social, Feb. 15, 2025, retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-if-it-saves-country-its-not-illegal-2025-02-16/
[9] See “Israel has cut off all supplies to Gaza” https://apnews.com/article/gaza-israel-hamas-palestinians-aid-explainer-ecc0e70d5ff1120a04bf36626dfd96f4
“Israeli Settlers Attack West Bank Village … ” https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-settlers-attack-west-bank-village-residents-say-2025-03-14/
“Video Shows Aid Workers Killed in Gaza … ” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/world/middleeast/gaza-israel-aid-workers-deaths-video.html
“Record Number of Journalists Killed … https://www.cbsnews.com/news/record-journalist-death-toll-in-gaza-60-minutes/
[10] “Broad Coalition of Mainstream Jewish Organizations Release Statement Rejecting False Choice Between Jewish Safety & Democracy” https://www.reconstructingjudaism.org/news/broad-coalition-of-mainstream-jewish-organizations-release-statement-rejecting-false-choice-between-jewish-safety-democracy/
[11] עני Ahni an impoverished person
לענות La’ahnot to answer
[12] Retrieved from Jackie Calmes, “What Hannah Arendt saw … ” The Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2025
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-04-10/hannah-arendt-germany-hitler
[13] Exodus 13:8,14.
[14] Morinis, E. Alan. Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar. Trumpeter, 2011.
Retrieved from https://americanmussar.com/american-mussar-4-week-challenge-humility/
15 Interestingly, the sacrifices of Shavuot, when we celebrate Divine Revelation and the Ascent to Sinai, were offered not with matzah but with two leavened loaves! Leviticus 23:17.
