Rabbi Chaim Bruk

Passover commences on April 1st and humanity needs to hear its message.

Passover isn’t just about the Jews who were redeemed from Egyptian bondage in 1313 BCE, but about each of us exploring our inner enslavement, our inner obstacles, our inner Pharaoh, and recognizing that, if we put in the effort, we too can experience freedom to be who we are at our core, at the Neshama, our soul level. We don’t have to reinvent ourselves; we just need to remove the shackles that keep our essence locked up.

Growing up, we had the Seder at 603 Empire Boulevard in Brooklyn with my maternal grandparents, Rabbi Shimon and Esther Goldman, of blessed memory. After the Seder, way past midnight, we’d go from the dining room into the living room, where Zayde would dance with his young grandchildren singing, "L’Shana Hab’ah BeYerushalayim… Shoin Shoin Shoin Yerushalayim Habnuya,” "Next Year In Jerusalem…” The warmth and vitality exuded by Zayde when he sang "shoin shoin shoin,” "already, now” in Yiddish, still warms my heart today. Here was a man whose parents and six siblings were murdered by the Nazis, who rebuilt a family from scratch after surviving the Holocaust, who never stopped hoping, never stopped believing, never stopped yearning and praying to make our way to Jerusalem with Mashiach.

This Passover, as we seek to find inner redemption, let’s resolve to think of collective redemption too. Let’s make a Mashiach world something real, something we can envision, something we learn more about, so when that moment happens soon we aren’t caught off guard but are expecting his arrival as we anticipated all along.

A Zissen Pesach! A Happy & Kosher Passover