Thursday, April 12, 2007

We will continue fighting. . .and what Pesach's all about (kinda)

Well Pesach has come and gone and I've spent, now my third Pesach, really wishing that I wasn't in America. Three years with 2 sedarim, two 2 day yom tovim and just a feeling of longing for Eretz Yisrael, my homeland, where the true land of freedom is.
I got an email from my sister who lives in Israel and she has informed me that she really doesn't want to spend another Pesach in the States and I don't blame her. I don't want to spend another Pesach in the States, but, at least for now, I know I'll be spending at least one more here, possibly two.
I don't know what it is about the 2 day Yom Tov that gets to me. Just to clarify above what the '3 years' are, four years ago I had not gone to yeshiva yet, and had not been exposed what living in the Land of Israel really meant. Now that I have lived there all I want to do is get back there permanently. I want to have only one day of Yom Tov, I won't have to deal with anymore of these 3-days-without-a-shower thing. I get an extra day of Chol Hamoed, and I get to eat chometz a day (plus 7 hours) before anyone else here in America.
But I don't want to move to Israel for these physical benefits. I want to experience Pesach, the holiday of Freedom, in the LAND of Freedom. The sense of peace in Israel (ironic isn't it) is unlike anyplace else in the world for a Jew. Long gone are the days where foreign governments will persecute us, long gone are the days when the future of the Jewish people is in question, long gone are the days when we didn't know how we would be treated on a day to day basis, we are finally in our land, the land that is unique only to us. No one else has ever been able to get the land to respond like we have. Take Gush Katif, they had an entire industry growing plants in sand. If you were to ask any gardener if sand would make good soil they would tell you that sand is one of the worst things you could use to grow plants. Yet we, the Jews, managed to do it.
We are a unnatural illogical people who should have disappeared from the earth ages ago
But we're still here.
Part of that has to do with this holiday of Pesach, where we tell over the story of our beginnings and how, no matter what happens to us, we will eventually come out on top.
Maybe that's the reason we have two days of Yom Tom in Chutz L'aretz, here, surrounded by non-Jews we need to be reminded twice about our purpose in the world and how, eventually (whether welike it or not) all Jews will one day live in Israel and we will be a light from Zion going out to the world with everyone having knowledge of the true G-d and Shalom


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