Passover, The Holocaust, Israel

Passover is especially significant to the Jewish people because it has so many meanings---rebirth in freedom from bondage, a sign of the pact between God and the people, and "the festival of freedom, the festival of Spring which marks the onset of harvest time in the Holy Land. . . . It is the festival of creation; nature and man are reborn" (Trepp, 1973, 206).

The time of imprisonment and suffering in Egypt was a terrible one for the Jewish people, a time in which there was much despair. It was not the despair and suffering of one person, however, as Trepp points out, but of the whole of the Jewish people. The event of liberation which the Passover's seven days of Seders celebrate is not a triumph of one Jew over an enemy, as with David over Goliath, but was rather a victory, bestowed by God, of the whole Jewish people: "In Judaism it is the resurrection not of One Person but of the People, for in Judaism it is the community which gives meaning to individual lives" (Trepp, 1973, 207).

Passover focuses on the Seders, or the ceremonial even

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il, powerful, killing machine of Nazi Germany is gone. Taken in retrospect at least, the Holocaust can be seen once again as a sign that---as a people---the Jews will be always saved by God to not only survive but to prosper. In addition, it is even argued that the Jews' special connection to God and their spiritual significance as a people are the factors which made hitler hate them and ear them so much and led him to try to destroy them: "by their survival, they have become the symbol of divine providence. . . . Dictators may declare themselves to be gods, . . . but in the end the divine will survives. . . . This may be one reason Hitler could not tolerate the Jews. They pointed to the limitations of his omnipotence" (Trepp, 1973, 77). On a more personal level, as expressed by Primo Levi, the Holocaust taught the horribly difficult lesson that the individual human being, whatever his will, whatever his determination, can be broken: "To destroy a man is difficult, . . . but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment" (Levi, 1993, 150). The Holocaust, then, is significant, in a most hideous way
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Approximate Word count = 1656
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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