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Passover 5762
By David R. Zukerman, NYC and Winsted
This Passover holiday marks the centennial of my father's birth. He was born on the last day of Passover, one hundred years ago, in Brest-Litovsk—which at that time was under the domination of the Russian czar, and which is now a city in Belarus—and was brought to these shores at the age of two. One year, as I understand it, the last day of Passover coincided with April 18, and Dad took that as his American birthday. Actually, by middle age, I don't think he much liked to be reminded of his birthday.
I think I can appreciate, finally, his lack of enthusiasm for birthday celebration. At a certain point in life, they seem to occur with increasing frequency. I can recall that when I was in my 20s and 30s, I would calculate the years until 2000, when I would hit my 60th birthday. Well, having passed that marker, those years seem to have gone by fairly quickly, and the pace isn't slowing.
My Passover prayer book has a table of the dates on which the holiday falls, by the Julian calendar. The book was published in the early 1960s and the dates went up to 2005—which suddenly is right around the corner.
My parents liked to go to the Concord Hotel for Passover. What with the dietary rules for Passover, which include the need for two extra sets of dishes and silverware (for Passover meat and Passover dairy meals), it was much easier to observe the holiday on vacation at a kosher hotel. My parents were drawn to the Concord because the Seder and the religious services were conducted by Richard Tucker, who also was a great opera tenor.
I think it is forty years since I heard Tucker at the Concord. My heavens, forty years! Last year, I wrote about it being forty years since my last summer as a counselor at Camp Wabigoon—and I think I took that anniversary rather more in stride than I am taking the one I am writing of today. Certainly more in stride than my current consideration of all the years, including thirty-eight before my time, reaching back a century to the birth of Sol Zukerman.
I have another Passover-related anniversary; Mom's mother died the first day of Passover in 1945, so I went to synagogue to say the kaddish for my grandmother. But there’s no more Concord Hotel to go to. By preference, I stayed home the two Seder nights to be with my dog Shana, who is 12 years old—and I wonder where those years went to, particularly when I notice that she seems to be a bit achy, at times.
In Israel, people went to a Seder in Netanya—for, I guess, the same reason that Sol and Anna Zukerman took their son to the Catskills for Passover: to enjoy the holiday with a lot less work. The aim of the Seder, commemorating the end of Egyptian bondage, is not just to recall emancipation, but to relive it. For that reason, bitter herbs are eaten at the start of the Seder, to remember the bitterness of slavery in Egypt, more than three thousand years ago. Someone, however, decided that this Passover in Netanya, Israel, a suicide bomber would commit an atrocity that will make this festival of Jewish national emergence very bitter—very bitter, indeed.
There was a demonstration in New York City on the fourth day of Passover—coinciding with Easter—outside the PLO mission to the United Nations. I heard an African-Jamaican woman, watching the anti-terror protest, express sympathy for the Jewish people murdered by the terrorists. I also heard her predict that God is going to intervene in the Middle East.
The Arab-Israel War began on my eighth birthday, May 15, 1848. There has been just one war waged against Israel. (What are termed "wars" are outbreaks of hostilities within the ongoing war that has ended only between Egypt and Israel, and Jordan and Israel.) In 1948, the violence was halted by cease-fires and truces, not by peace, which the Israelis sought.
Also in 1948, Clark Clifford advised President Truman not to worry about the flow of oil, because Saudi Arabia has no place but from us to get dollars for their oil. Clifford, Special Counsel to President Truman from 1946 to 1950, noted in a March 1948 memo that we incur "irreparable damage" in international standing if we appear to tremble out of concern for our Mideast oil supplies.
From the looks of rising gas prices this Passover season, we have yet to take Clifford's instruction to heart. Is it that everyone is ignoring simple common sense based on experience, while waiting for God to intervene? I have a hunch God is waiting for us to get things right with the brains He gave us.
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