That’s the vision of Vehi She’amdah: the promise to Avraham is that Jewish exceptionalism has an upside
That wish is stronger this year, because of all Seder nights, this one will be different. After the most frightening six months since the Holocaust, we’ve changed, and that will be expressed in song. If on a given year, Mah Nishtanah — adorably squawked by children everywhere — is the Seder anthem, this year another tune will come out ahead.
Vehi She’amdah. If you haven’t heard the fervor with which this is sung, from yeshivah kumzitzes to somber gatherings of secular Israelis this year, you’ve been asleep.
It encapsulates the pent-up Jewish pain of a gruesome massacre, horrible war, and a thousand hostile editorials and threats from foreign leaders. The disbelief that, so quickly after “Never again,” we’re here again.
It’s also the distilled expression of a winter’s worth of this column’s thoughts about our current predicament, which is a sharp, painful lesson in Jewish exceptionalism.
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