Dear friends,

As we begin our preparations for Passover I recall a famous Midrash in which the Rabbis pose the question of what made the Israelites worthy of being redeemed from slavery. (Of course, there is a debate among the Rabbis about the legitimacy of this question to begin with. For after all, after having been enslaved for over 400 years, and after crying out to God for help, it was certainly time for them to be rescued and brought back to their homeland! Nevertheless, the original question still stands and) the Midrash suggests the following response: "They were worthy of being redeemed because of the righteous people among them and their deeds-foe example Amram (Moses’ father) and those around him." In other words, even though they were enslaved for generations; even though the average person was unable to do more than just keep his/head above water and survive; there were a few exceptional individuals who managed to transcend the difficulties of physical, psychological, and emotional enslavement to good deeds, remind the people of their Jewish heritage, keep its message and vision alive, and preserve their identity. The great good that these few individuals did was enough to preserve the people and make them worthy of being redeemed.

This Rabbinic response satisfies two problems posed by the initial question of "what made the Israelites worthy of being redeemed from slavery":

1. It indicates the real meaning of the question. Our Rabbis were not in search of outstanding good or unusual deeds that they might have performed that would have made our ancestors "worthy" or being redeemed from their suffering. In a sense that is a cruel question. No people in its entirety deserves to be enslaved for any amount of time, let alone hundreds of years. No people needs to "earn" its redemption from servitude. To live in freedom on one’s own land is a God given right and privilege.

Our Rabbis were asking another very different question. They wanted to know if our ancestors deserved to be redeemed as "Israelites," as "Jews." Had they been able to maintain enough of their heritage, practices, and identity-in spite of centuries of oppression-to make them worthy of being redeemed as part of the chain of Jewish history that would bring them first to Sinai to receive the Torah, and then to the promised land in fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah? Their answer was that the actions of a few outstanding individuals had been able to fulfill this precondition. Consequently they did, in fact, deserve to be redeemed as Jews within the chain of Jewish history.

2. This Rabbinic response is not a "one time" comment on the redemption from Egypt. It is to be applied to every generation throughout Jewish history. One never knows when the actions of one or a few individuals will have profound effects on the fate of the Jewish people in generations to come. I recently attended the annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly (the worldwide organization of Conservative Rabbis) that took place in Philadelphia. We celebrated our one hundredth anniversary with great joy, pausing to look back in admiration in all that we had accomplished in our first one hundred years. We started out in Phildelphia as a very small alumni association of the then very new Jewish Theological Seminary. We have become, today, an international Rabbinical Assembly of almost 1500 Rabbis serving the Conservative Movement and the entire Jewish people all over the world: the United States, Canada, South America, England, Europe, Israel, and the Former Soviet Union. Our grwoing Masorti Movement in Israel and our growing number of synagogues in Israel are offering a meaningful alternative to orthodoxy to increasing numbers of native Israelis, and we are a significant player in the movement for the legitimization of religious pluralism within the Jewish state. From one school in New York we have grown to encompass Rabbinical Schools in California, South America, Israel, as well as an affiliation with the Jewish Theological Seminary in Budapest. We have fostered the growth of hundreds of synagogues, significant Jewish educational institutions, the Ramah Camp system that now has camps in the United States, Canada, South America and Israel. We have maintained out commitment to Halakha (Jewish Law) as well as developing an approach to Halakhic innovation. We have fostered and nurtured our commitment to serious Jewish study and scholarship. We have continued to maintain our devotion to "Klal Yisrael" (the Jewish People in its entirety). We have grown from a small alumni association to an international Rabbinical Assembly that has had a profound influence on American and then worldwide Jewry that far exceeded anything any of our founders could have imagined. In a very significant way we have played, and will continue to play, an important part in the ongoing process of the redemption and renewal of the Jewish People.

My very best wishes to everyone for a "Khag Kasher v’Sameach"- a "Kosher and joyous Pesach"

Sincerely,