Layl Shimurim - When Your Children AskRabbi Gary S. Creditor
Rabbi Emeritus, Temple Beth-El
Richmond, Virginia
On February 1, 2025 we read the Torah portion of Bo. Besides its place in our account of the Exodus, this is special to me because this was the Shabbat of my senior sermon in Rabbinical School. Yet it words reverberate in me now even stronger than it did then. In February, 1976, with our son Menachem only a few months old, I wove my sermon around how I would answer his questions as he grew up: how to be a Jew; why to be a Jew; how to observe mitzvot; why to observe mitzvot? Reading this Torah portion now is totally different. It is like a thunder clap upon my ears, heart, and mind. I truly don’t know which was worse, which was scarier, that night in Egypt when they were told that redemption was upon them, or now, when every piece of our lives and world is shaking from pillar to post? In the Rabbinic construction of the Seder ritual, three of the four children are found in this sedra. One asks about the ritual; one is silent and does not ask a question but the answer is given. In the Hebrew, the third only uses two words: Mah Zot? What is all this? And while in the text it is in an even tone, and in the Haggadah it just fits in neatly, not now.
Of all the questions, this is the one that scares me the most.
Of all the questions, this is the most disturbing.
Of all the questions, this one isn’t asked. It is screamed!
What is going on here?
What is happening?
What is happening to us?
What is happening to our neighbors, our friends?
Mah Zot? What is all this?Mah Zot? What is happening to us?Mah Zot? What should be do?Mah Zot? What can we do?
While we need to articulate answers for ourselves, even more so we need to articulate them for our children and grandchildren, for the world we will bequeath them. They will look back and ask: Mah zot?
While in Egypt there was only one night of shimurim, of watching and waiting, but for us every single day and night is one of shimurim. Our commentators discuss who is doing the watching? Is it God? Is it Moses and Aaron? Is it the children of Israel? Except for the detail of the silence of that night, the Torah text does not tell us how the people felt, did the children ask them any questions, did anybody go to sleep, what were they thinking when they saw the last sunset and the last sunrise in Egypt? No details. Midrash can fill in the blanks. We just stare at a blank wall.
What about us? What about our Layl Shimurim? What do we do? I will tell you what I do: I wait to cringe to read the next headline. While l need any other news, I want – though I shouldn’t – to avoid the headlines, I want to avoid CNN, BBC, CBSNews and any other outlet. The horrors being afflicted upon our society today, upon children in schools, upon those of various sexual dispositions, upon people who are various hues of brown, people who speak Spanish or other languages than English, the elderly, the poor of any segment of society, the disabled, their horrors are just as bad if not worse than our ancestors experienced in Egypt! Not one iota less! Their Layl Shimurim is laced with fear and anxiety. They are facing a Pharoah with no Moses and Aaron to throw down the rod to become a snake, to change the waters of the Nile to blood. Perhaps, perhaps except for us. Except for us. This is a layl shimurim for all of us, bar none.
It is not easy to explain it to ourselves, never mind to our children or grandchildren how the government of this country has twisted one hundred and eighty degrees. But I have not changed! We have not changed! And our values have not changed! Our Judaism has not changed! It is from the experience of Egypt that we stand up and proclaim about the holiness and humanity of every human being. Bar none. That people united, that means the government, exists to protect the innocent, help keep us healthy, to protect us in consort with likeminded countries, and uplift the weakest among us. Echoing the voice of the prophets Abraham Lincoln said it beautifully in his second inaugural address: “With malice towards none, with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” This is our true soul. Love thy neighbor as thyself. That is our neshama. Give me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. That is who we are. We must tell ourselves every morning, noon and night, we must tell our children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters, this is who I am, this is who we are! We will not give up! We will not change!
In the Torah, the question of the first child is asked by the generation who wasn’t in Egypt and didn’t experience the redemption but sees the Passover ritual. The child asks: Mah ha-avodah ha-zot la-chem? The Midrash of the Haggadah focuses on the use of la-chem, for you, and makes him into the evil child. But the Torah doesn’t. It answers the child and says that we do these rituals to remember and ingrain in ourselves the understanding that redemption finally does come and we remember it; Pharoah fell and Egypt was destroyed because the arc of history turned to God’s demand for justice, for righteousness, for integrity, for fairness, and His seal is Emet, is truth. That is why we have a seder. That is why we have rituals. This is what we do because this is what we are.
What service can we do? I forward and share on Facebook every single piece that expresses my/our values and beliefs. I forward and share every piece of opposition to the wrongs. I forward and share every piece that supports justice. I give donations to many organizations that fight on a higher level for humanity. And if and when it comes to a march, come rain or shine, as I have done so in the past, I will do so again. As Dr. Heschel wrote about being in the march in Selma, Alabama, “my feet were praying.” Mine will, too. Our ancestors walked out of Egypt and Daniel was fearless in the lion’s den. I/we can be no different. We can do no less.
So I close these words by citing a song writer who could never know how timeless some of his compositions would be. Garth Brooks, The Change.
0ne hand reaches out
And pulls a lost soul from harm
While a thousand more go unspoken for
And they say,
“What good have you done by saving just this one”
It’s like whispering a prayer
In the fury of a storm
And I hear them saying,
“You’ll never change things
And no matter what you do
It’s still the same thing”
But it’s not the world that I am changing
I do this so, this world will know
That it will not change me.
This heart still believes
That love and mercy exist
While all the hatreds rage
And so many say
“That love is all but pointless,
In madness such as this
“It’s like trying to stop a fire
With the moisture of a kiss”
And I hear them saying,
“You’ll never change things
And no matter what you do
It’s still the same thing”
But it’s not the world that I am changing
I do this so, the world will know
That it will not change me.
As long as one heart still holds on
Then hope is never really gone
And I hear them saying,
“You’ll never change things
And no matter what you do
It’s still the same thing”
But it’s not the world that I am changing
I do this so, this world we know
Never changes me
What I do is so, this world will know
That it will not change me.
