22 | JANUARY 30 • 2020
P
assover may be a long way
off, but the story of the
Exodus is the topic of this
week’
s Torah portion.
The name Passover only
reminds us about one small
detail of the Exodus from Egypt,
that before the last plague, God
passed over the houses
where there was blood
on the doorposts. This
seems just a technical
detail, so why was the
holiday named after this
event?
The answer can be
found in the following
story from the 1960s.
There was a young
man who studied in
Manhattan, where all the
students in his yeshivah
were clean shaven; but
he wanted to grow a beard.
His parents and teachers were
against this because they felt
that he would be seen as a hip-
pie.
He decided to ask the
Lubavitcher Rebbe what to
do. The Rebbe said to him,
“Surely you are familiar with the
statement in the Midrash that
the Jews were redeemed from
Egypt on the merit of the fact
that they didn’
t change their
names, their language or their
dress. On the other hand, there
is another statement that the
Jews were idol worshippers and
didn’
t deserve to be redeemed.
How can we reconcile these two
opposite comments?”
The Rebbe then went on to
say, “Let us take, for example,
the hippies: Abbie Hoffman
and, before them, the beatniks
Allen Ginsberg and others
with Jewish names. They didn’
t
change their names; they didn’
t
dress like regular people. Even
in their language, they used a
jargon which they developed.
”
The Rebbe continued, “In the
’
30s, if someone was a social-
ist, then everyone said he was
a Jew; in the ’
40s, if someone
was a communist, everyone
said he was surely a Jew; in the
’
60s, if you said hippies,
immediately people would
say the Jews brought this
‘
problem.
’
Therefore,
even hippies are worthy
of being redeemed with
the congregation of Israel
because they separate
themselves from the rest
of the population.
”
Jewish identity is not
about a person walking
around with his tzitzit
hanging out or a black
hat on his head. The Jews
in Egypt worshipped idols, but
they dressed differently from
the Egyptians. Their clothes
were such that everyone knew
they were Jews. This is one of
the reasons why God insisted
the Jewish people paint the
doorposts with blood. At that
moment in time, it was a state-
ment of Jewish identity.
Today, we should not be
embarrassed or afraid to, figura-
tively, paint the blood onto our
doorposts, to show our Jewish
identity in public.
The fact that the Jews in
Egypt were never embarrassed
about their Jewish identity was
very dear to God, and that’
s
what merited their redemption.
It was not about a religious
identity, but about a Jewish
identity; and, therefore, the holi-
day is called Passover.
Rabbi Schneor Greenberg is rabbi of the
Chabad Jewish Center of Commerce,
rabbi@jewishcommerce.org.
Parshat
Bo: Exodus
10:1-13:16;
Jeremiah
46:13-28.
Rabbi
Schneor
Greenberg
Spirit
torah portion
Our Jewish Identity
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