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Why this Pesach is different April 11–24, 2025 • Pesach • 13 Nisan 5785 • Vol. 24, No. 13
Here are 8 reasons
By Deborah Fineblum For an entire year, the story waits patiently in the Haggadah to whisper powerful secrets in our ears on Seder night. Though the words have remained unchanged for the last 3,336 years, the Passover message offers nuances annually, its ageless wisdom illuminating the Jewish experience of that exact moment. The Torah tells them to mark this momentous experience “in the month of springtime,” and the holiday begins this year on Saturday night, April 12, with the first (and for Israelis, the only) Seder and runs eight days through the evening of April 20 (seven days in Israel). Down through the ages, Jews have gathered with family and friends on the night of the Seder to relive their people’s most dramatic and defining moment: No less than the Master of the Universe rescuing the Israelites from 210 years of back-breaking and soul-killing slavery at the hands of the cruelest of Egyptian pharaohs and his whip-cracking taskmasters. But even now, as Jews around the globe prepare to celebrate freedom from Egyptian slavery, the message that Passover delivers strikes to the heart of what it means to be a Jew in 2025/5785. What does it mean to know that 59 people, living and dead, are being held captive in the Gaza Strip by a terror organization — and have been for nearly 18 months while the world waits and watches? That Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran and other rogue entities seek Israel’s destruction … yet again. To put a finger on this pulse, JNS asked eight people to speak at about what the Haggadah can teach right now.
March to freedom at HALB
1. Michael Levy Second graders at HALB didn’t just learn about the Exodus,they re-enacted it, leaving Mitzrayim and crossing Yam Suf. See more schools on page 11.
For the Levy family, the holiday of freedom has never been as poignant as it is this year, since Michael Levy’s little brother, Or Levy, was See Here are 8 reasons on page 8
The story of life is like Seder’s broken matzah RABBi YoSSY GoLdMAn
S. African Rabbinical Assn.
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eder means “order.” And one of the items in the order of the Seder agenda is yachatz. Well, what is yachatz? We break the middle matzah of the three matzahs on our Seder plates. The larger part is put away for the afikomen and the smaller part remains inside the Seder plate throughout the recital of the Haggadah, until we say the blessing of Hamotzi. This is true lechem oni, the bread of poverty. Not only is it a flat, tasteless waferm but it’s broken as well. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin has pointed out that we say all of maggid, virtually the entire Haggadah, over half a matzah. And he makes a very powerful conclusion:
A young boy breaks a piece of matzah during a model Seder.
Nati Shohat, Flash90
Isn’t life just like that? There is always something eluding us. For some, it may be health, for others wealth or success, nachas or happiness in general. Somehow, as much as we achieve in life, there is always something more that we want that keeps slipping out of our grasp. Our Sages taught, “No person dies having achieved even half of his ambitions and desires.” “Really?” you may say. Aren’t there many individuals who have achieved everything they set out to achieve? I know a couple of guys who seem to fit the description of “the man who has everything.” The answer is yes, there are such people. The problem is that as soon as they achieve one ambition, they have broader horizons, and new and bigger ambitions. With each success, our ambitions develop further. Elon Musk is currently the world’s richest man. So he seeks a new challenge (to balance the United States See The story of life on page 22 budget).