This Passover many are busy preparing big family Seders and daily feasts of wonderful foods we eat during these eight miraculous days.  We love to gather together and listen to the story of our escape from slavery in Egypt under the leadership of Moses.  It is a story full of miracles and events that stagger the mind and has also been fodder for several big budget Hollywood productions.  We relive the miracles via the annual reading of the Hagaddah, and we thrill to seeing them re-created before our eyes compliments of renowned director Cecil B. DeMille, who is responsible for not one, but two full-length epic motion pictures titled The Ten Commandments.  This year, ABC television is presenting a brand new, technologically up-to-date film of the exact same title.  Jews, Christians and people of all religions and beliefs are drawn to this most heroic and morally satisfying epic.

The one thing all of our personal celebrations and film recreations have in common is that they continue to deal with the events as they are recorded from biblical times.  This is as it should be, because it is from those times that our basic Jewish belief system is formed and re-enforced.  While it is comforting and inspiring to remind ourselves of the Peysakh miracles, it is incumbent upon us to put those events into a modern day context. 

Jews are still facing enemies who would like nothing better than to make us disappear.  We are scattered all over the Diaspora and we seek each other out to form strong supportive bonds. No matter where we live, our hearts and minds are also in Israel, the biblical Jewish homeland.  The brave Jews who have followed the word of G-d and have created the thriving Democratic Jewish homeland, Eretz Yisroel, face continued threats to their existence. 

Today we don’t seem to witness the miracles that occurred during our 40-year sojourn to the Promised Land and only a few self-aggrandizing zealots claim to have the same direct communication with G-d that Moses enjoyed.  G-d does not appear to be willing to drown our enemies in the sea as he did in ancient times. 

We eat unleavened bread out of tradition and respect for our ancestors suffering, but it is not imposed upon us by practical necessity.  The Peysakh Seder plate contains all of the reminders of the bitterness of our ancestor’s tears and the suffering we endured as slaves of the Pharaoh.  But today many Jews shed the same salty tears from the turmoil they are experiencing trying to hold their homeland together.  It seems that in our modern age, we must make our own, new miracles. 

Since G-d has not seen fit to drown our enemies in the sea, we must find a way to keep them from driving us into it.  We have built up our military might and this has kept our surrounding enemies from annihilating us and taking back this homeland as their own.  However, we are still facing constant fighting in an on-going war, and the loss of countless innocent lives on all sides.  As Jews we must design a miracle to ensure our existence in Eretz Yisroel and to also achieve peace.  We will only survive if we can turn our enemies into our partners in peace and eventually our friends.  An unending siege will only increase the anger and aggression and lead to a state of perpetual war.  While an “eye for an eye” sounds fair in theory, it does not work in our very real world. 

Instead of looking to the sea as a way of drowning our problems, we could reach across the dry land separating us and the Palestinians.  Certainly, we must take a firm stand with the new Hamas government and demand they renounce their denial of Israel’s right to exist, and that they cease their terrorist tactics.  But it is not easy to convince your enemy to meet your demands if they are all perceived as one-sided.   

Israel must unconditionally invite the Palestinians to the peace table, or the dinner table, or, as President Nixon did with Red China back in the 1970s, the ping pong table.  In the meanwhile, Israel must cease activities such as targeted assassinations, if only for the reason that they do not always get their man and the cost in lives of innocent civilians including women and children does nothing to encourage a dialogue of peace.  Someone has got to be the one that says “enough, no more,” to end the bloody cycle of violence. Jews are often said to possess saikhel (smarts), and it will take lots of saikhel and patience to propel the movement in a more positive direction.  Let’s try this avenue before we condemn it as useless.  There is always time for more lives to be lost, but we should not pass up any opportunity to stop the clock on the death count. 

At the joyous time when peace finally does arrive after waiting interminably for this to occur, we can then go back to using our Seders and traditional accoutrements truly as respectful symbols of the suffering and sacrifices that have been made in the past, and not as a continuing blood bath that knows no end.  Who knows?  Maybe then that extra cup of wine might finally be drained.