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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