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Millions of my fellow Jews will gather around their tables next week to recount the Passover story. They’ll do so more than six months after the horrific Oct. 7 attacks, an ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas and spiking antisemitism.
Set against this backdrop of loss and anguish, the tale of the ancient Israelites’ deliverance from adversity seems less relatable this year. Instead the holiday’s warning that “in every generation an enemy rises up to harm us” feels far more relevant.
But after traveling to Israel and Ukraine last month, I feel drawn to two other aspects of the holiday story. They are informed by the fact that my organization — the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee — was founded in 1914 to aid indigent Jews in Jerusalem during World War I. We’ve aided Jews in danger around the world and vulnerable people in the land of Israel ever since.
The first takes place after the Israelites have crossed the Red Sea after years of slavery and repression. Along their route in the desert, the Israelites feel safe, bolstered by G-d’s gift of manna, water and protection. It is then that their eternal enemy, the Amalekites, attack them.
The Israelites prevail, but we learn that among the worst horrors the Amalekites perpetrate, they target the stragglers at the end of the Israelite encampment — the weary and old, defenseless women and children. G-d later rebukes this brutality when expressing his antipathy for Amalek.
I understand G-d’s loathing. I have met today’s stragglers. They are hundreds of thousands of people who lived through bombardment and terror, fled their homes and lost loved ones, and are now grappling with widespread displacement, trauma, grief and want.
All of this has resulted in a humanitarian crisis facing the Jewish people unmatched since World War II. Beyond the 120,000 hardest-hit Israelis my organization has aided since Oct. 7, countless more are in dire need. As many as 84% of Israeli children are suffering from anxiety. Tens of thousands of Israeli seniors are still living as evacuees, deteriorating by the day.
Some 250,000 Israelis, among them the displaced and injured soldiers, are without work. And in Ukraine, more than 25% of the country’s 150,000 Jews are reliant on humanitarian aid from my organization to survive the ongoing conflict.
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This leads me to the second concept — the lechem oni or “bread of affliction” commonly known as matzah. Throughout the eight days of Passover, we eat this cracker-like bread just as the Israelites did when their dough did not have time to rise as they fled Egypt.
But at our Seders, we will bless the matzah repeatedly and call in the poorest from our community to share in our meal. For that reason, it is also known as the bread of poverty. Today I think it should be called the bread of solidarity.
In centering the pain of those most in need, and engaging in acts that support them, we safeguard the most devastated victims and ensure they are part of our collective determination for better days. That is why we are delivering more than 30,000 boxes of matzah to the neediest Ukrainian Jews so they too can celebrate amid ongoing challenges.
Like many aspects of the Seder — the reading of the 10 plagues, the mandatory Four Cups of wine, the Dayenu song — it’s no coincidence that the ritual of welcoming the needy into our homes is built-in and repeated annually. Jews are instructed to experience Passover every year as if we too were taken out of slavery.
This highlights the genius of the codifiers of these rituals — that alongside moments of great triumph there is too often adversity. The response must be to choose life — to act to support those who have no other lifeline and share in our tradition of hope.
Reuven R., an 88-year old Bergen Belsen survivor, is one of those people. He was a founder and builder of Kfar Maimon, a moshav near Gaza. After his village was devastated on Oct. 7, Reuven was evacuated and received social and mental health support from JDC. It was not the first time — we also helped him in DP camps after World War II.
Reuven has plenty of reasons to be bitter. But instead of ruminating on life’s horrors, he volunteers to help other evacuees and support them as they adjust to a new reality. Built into him is one of Passover’s most empowering messages for all of us: lift those up who are most battered and bruised, generation after generation.
Ariel Zwang is the CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
