Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - The Paradox of Passover 2025 - with Rachel Goldberg

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Watch Call me Back on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CallMeBackPodcastTo contact us, sign up for updates, and access transcripts, visit: https://arkmedia.org/Dan on X: https://x.com/dansenorDan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dansenorArk Media on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arkmediaorgUpcoming Event Notice: Dan Senor will be delivering this year’s State of World Jewry Address at the 92nd Street Y (92NY) on Tuesday May 13 at 7:30 pm: https://www.92ny.org/event/the-state-of-world-jewry-addressToday’s episode: Jews began celebrating Passover during the actual exodus from Egypt, sometime in the 13th–15th century BCE, and the tradition has continued—evolving but unbroken—ever since. To honor this tradition, we will be doing something different on this Call me Back episode - we will be talking about Passover, and about what this tradition can teach us about this paradoxical moment.With us today is Rachel Goldberg, who – for most of her career – was a professional Jewish educator. We wanted to speak with her as we prepare for our seders. Items discussed in this episode:BOOK: A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized to Free Soviet Jews, by Shaul KelnerPODCAST: Listening to "Call Me Back" On Motzaei Shabbos  CREDITS:ILAN BENATAR - Producer & EditorMARTIN HUERGO - Sound EditorYARDENA SCHWARTZ - Executive Editor, Ark MediaGABE SILVERSTEIN - ResearchYUVAL SEMO - Music Composer

We have actually an obligation this year to really beat ourselves up at the Seder, because the whole point of Passover, it is supposed to be a commemoration of leaving the worst form of bondage and slavery that we ever experienced. And how can we do that this year when we know there are 59 people who are still there, 24 of whom are alive? Alive and in the worst most horrific bondage that we can picture There's one question and one question only and the question is why are they still there. It's 930 a.m. on Sunday, April 6th here in New York City. It is 430 p.m. on Sunday, April 6th in Israel as 59 hostages remain captive in Gaza and as as Jews all around the world, from Sydney to Jerusalem to Paris, London, New York, Vancouver, and beyond, are preparing to celebrate Passover,

the holiday of freedom. To say that this Passover is a paradox is an understatement. I do wonder if the hostages who are being starved and tortured in the tunnels of Gaza even know it is Passover. Jews began celebrating Pesach during the actual exodus from Egypt sometime in the range of the 13th to 15th century BCE and the tradition has continued evolving but unbroken ever since. To honor this tradition, we will be doing something different on this Call Me Back episode. We will be talking about Passover and about what this tradition can teach us about this paradoxical moment. With us

today is Rachel Goldberg who really needs no introduction to our audience but there is another part of Rachel's life that most of you probably don't know. For most of her career, Rachel was a professional Jewish educator, and I was hoping to speak with her as I sat down to prepare for our family seders. Before our conversation with Rachel,

two quick housekeeping notes. First, we've heard from a number of you that the state of world jewelry address that I'll be delivering on Tuesday May 13th at the 92nd Street Y was sold out and you were looking for ways to get tickets. A number of you reached out trying to get tickets and the team at the 92nd Street Y asked us to update on this podcast that the event has been moved now into a larger venue at the 92nd Street Why so it is now possible to register again if you haven't already so if you haven't registered we'll post a link in the show notes and

Second housekeeping note just a quick Thank you to our friend and regular on this podcast Motti Friedman who lent Rachel Goldberg his podcast Recording gear in Jerusalem today. It was an important last minute logistical hurdle he cleared for us. So thank you, Mati. Now on to Rachel Goldberg on the paradox of Passover 2025. This is Call Me Back. And I am pleased to welcome back to this podcast my, oh geez, what do I do here, Rachel? My long time friend. Very best friend who's been with you through thick and thin since we were in third grade together.

So Rachel is mocking me here because as many of you may recall, I used to, but no longer do, I used to try to characterize the friendship I had with many of my guests. And Rachel gave me Tzouris offline because she said I was diluting the nature of these so-called friendships because she says, you have lots of guests on and if everyone is a longtime friend, none of them are longtime friends. And she kept banging me with that. All right? So now I don't do that.

That said, regularly, that said, Rachel, I consider a friend. We will leave it there. Oh my gosh, just a friend? Okay, sorry. All right. Dear friend, thought partner, I will leave it there. But one very practical thing I wanted to tell you before we get into the meat of our conversation is you made me very self-conscious over Shabbat in a very healthy way or at least in a way that my family appreciated.

You don't even realize that you did this, but you and I spoke during the week about doing this podcast and then we spoke again on Friday and I told you I would send you some notes of my thoughts on how we should go with this conversation that you would get, I would send it to you over WhatsApp and you would get them when you came out of Shabbat because you and I spoke last before now, right before you were heading to shul on Friday. And I said, you'll get them when you come out of Shabbat. And you said, okay, but don't send them on Shabbat. And I said, Oh, don't worry, I won't like meaning I won't intrude on your Shabbat. And you said, no, no, no, won't intrude on your Shabbat. And you said no, no, no Don't send them on your Shabbat, right and That instantly had two effects one out of respect for you

Not wanting to disrupt my Shabbat or impose on my Shabbat I panicked late Friday afternoon telling Alon that we had to get all our work done for this episode before our Shabbat, which you know, we've never had that kind of panic like that at six o'clock on Friday. And two, it gave me a flashback to when we last recorded an episode, not the last time I saw you guys, but last time I recorded an episode,

which was a year ago. And this you may not remember, which is I was in Tel Aviv, you were somewhere near Haifa or something, about an hour and a half away from Tel Aviv, and I was recording an episode with you at the end of Shabbat, and you had made it clear that you did not want me driving to where you and John

were to record the episode on Shabbat, that I had to wait until after Shabbat to drive to you, and I'm sitting there doing the math, thinking there's no way this is gonna work, because I have to fly, I was flying out that night back to New York, so if I have to wait till the end of Shabbat, then drive an hour and a half, then do the episode, there's no way I will make my flight.

And you had been insistent that you would not have me drive to you on Shabbat. So here we are again. And Alon started texting me over Shabbat and I said, I'm going to be offline for Shabbat. Because Rachel's religiously coercive. Yes. And he said, totally and he said, totally. I said, totally. Because I didn't want you to not enjoy Shabbat because you were trying to do something for

me. It wasn't trying to impose Shabbat on you and say, here's how you have to observe. But it was that, you know, if you're going to be with your family or doing something on your own, I don't want you breaking that in order to do something for me. But you probably had a very nice Shabbat because of it. Well, that's just it. What I was going to tell you is we do observe Shabbat, not as strictly as you do, I think, or my sister does, or my mother does, but we do observe Shabbat. But full disclosure here, I do violate it from time to time. I will glance at my

phone to see if any messages have come through, and it's something I'm working on. There is no judgment here, but I like that this is feeling a lot more like confession that I thought that this was going to be. Exactly. And your comment to me made me more alert, more aware about it. I will send you, by the way, there's this rabbi from Teaneck, New Jersey named Elliot Schreier in Teaneck, Orthodox rabbi, and he did a podcast, I am not exaggerating here when I say this, he did a podcast episode called,

he did, he has a podcast, this rabbi, listening to call me back on Motshe Shavas. So the whole topic was, is it okay to listen to the podcast, because from time to time, as you know, we do emergency episodes if there's big news in Israel, and we've made the decision, while we generally don't record episodes on Shabbat, we will if there's an emergency out of news.

And he held a discussion on whether or not his congregants or those who listen to him, should they feel okay about listening to an episode that they know is recorded on Shabbat, even if they're listening to it after Shabbat. So, you know, there's a lot, I'll post that podcast on the show notes too. We're going to talk about Pesach and the seder, and I am going to pull back here a lot and be more student and let you

be teacher. You have been a teacher for much of your career. If we can pull this off, I really would like that to be the dynamic here. So I'm going to just ask you a few questions and we'll kind of see where they go to get you into teach mode. So the most basic one, we have a lot of listeners who are deeply engaged with Pesach and I think we also have a lot of Jewish listeners who are passively engaged intellectually with Pesach and then we have non-Jewish listeners who are probably curious about Pesach but have no idea what it's really all about. So can you just talk about, let's start with the Haggadah. What is the Haggadah, which is the key book, text that guides us through the Seder? What is

it? What makes it unique relative to what we use in other Jewish holidays? And when was it written? Well, I'd even back up a little bit because most people don't like to be lost. I hate being lost, whether it's on the street, in the woods, in history. So I think even before talking about what is the Haggadah, to just talk about where do we get this idea that we have this holiday of Passover and where do we get this idea that we have this event on the first night and first two nights outside of Israel, this event called the Seder. And so, just for like a very quick crash course, the Bible starts, you have Adam and Eve and

the unfortunate apple incident, you have Noah, the flood, the rainbow, you have Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the forefathers. Jacob has 12 sons. One of them is Joseph, the one with the pretty coat. He ends up being sold into slavery by his brothers and he ends up in Egypt, which sounds terrible, but they all actually end up in Egypt due to famine that was in the land of Canaan. And then things happen and regime change happens and the Hebrew people, what we were called

back then before being called the Jewish people, end up in slavery. For it's debated. It's somewhere between 400 and 200 years. Whatever it is, it's horrible because it's slavery. And then Moses arrives, there's the burning bush and God says, I'm hearing the people crying out, it's time to get them out of being in bondage, being enslaved, go get them. And that is the beginning of the book of Exodus. We had, you know, the book of Genesis, then we have the beginning of the book of Exodus, and we start

with this story of the Exodus of the people who become the Jewish people leaving Egypt. And at the end of the Exodus story, we have this commandment. It's in chapter 13 of the book of Exodus, And we have different commandments, different mitzvot that we can do at various times of the year or at various times of the day, right? There's certain mitzvot that you could do every day. You could do honoring your parents every day. You could do giving charity, giving tzedakah every day. We have keeping the Sabbath that you do once a week. Then we have some commandments that we have once a year, a once a year opportunity. And the once a year opportunity on the night, the same night that we were taken out of the land of Egypt, which on the Jewish calendar is the 15th of Nisan, we have a commandment

on that night in chapter 13 verse 8, and it says, that is the night that you tell your children. It is because of what God did for me, setting me free from my bondage and my slavery and my pain. That is why we are commemorating tonight. Is that night the 15th of Nisan? Since we left Egypt, that the Jewish people have had a commemoration every year on that night. And initially, how we did that when we were in the land of Israel, when we first came into the

land of Israel, when we had a temple, so we're talking about, you know, 2000 years ago, we used to bring offerings on the night of the 15th of Nisan. Now we no longer have the temple. The only part of the temple that is intact is the outer, outer Western Wall, which we call the Western Wall or sometimes we call it the Wailing Wall because people go there to pray and get very emotional and there's a lot of crying that's done at the Western Wall. And in place of these offerings that we used to bring, the rabbis of the Mishniac times instituted that we would have an evening where we would come together

and we would have an order of things that we would discuss and we would have certain foods that we would use that were symbolic. And that would be called a seder, because the word seder means order. And the book, the how-to, how do you do a seder book, is called the Haggadah, which the Shoresh, the root of the word Haggadah is lehagid, to tell. So that book is the how we tell our story book. And that is how we've started this process of having these, we call them dinners, but really only one part of the Seder is the meal. Which is very frustrating to many Jews because- Oh, they have no idea what they're getting into. They think, oh, I'm going to dinner.

And then, you know, you're sitting there for two hours before anything even happens. No, you get a little bit of parsley. Right, have a little snack. Celery. Before you go. But what's intriguing to me about the Haggadah is that there are parts that people are familiar with. The four questions are something that people seem to learn,

even if they're not very knowledgeable. I didn't grow up in a religious home. So for me, we would go to my grandparents, we would say the four questions. My grandma always had pink lemonade. My grandpa would hide for each of the grandchildren, he would hide a piece of matzah as the afikoman, which is part of the seder. And that was it. That was our seder. We were very bare bones. But what I like is that the four questions are really sample questions. It's the whole point of the Seder is it's supposed to be this dynamic, interactive question and answer, not frontal teaching, not lecture, not what I'm doing

now. This is like I'm fired. Like this would be terrible. Like you don't just have somebody talking, talking. It should be this interactive, fidecious. Discussion, debate. Absolutely. And so everybody has a voice. So there are sample questions and then there are sample personality types that you address. So there's, we call them the four sons because the Haggadah was written at a time where there was not asking about, you know, the four daughters, but it's really four people. It's four personality types. It's saying there are people even today as any educator or as any friend when you're getting, you know, we all have friends who are more inquisitive, who are more curious. We have friends who are the devil's advocate.

We have the friends who are more reserved and give space for you to talk. And then there's friends who really, we like them, but sometimes we have to say to them, how do you feel? What is happening? What is your thought process? And all of those characteristics come up in the Haggadah. On the four questions, the tradition is, I don't know if it's more than just if it's anything beyond just a tradition or it's actually required, but the tradition is that the youngest person at the Seder table leads the four questions. And growing up, and I know that's the same today with my kids when they were growing up, and I just see this everywhere, there's this pressure on the youngest child.

It's like, and the kids who are older than the youngest child are like, they think they like lucked out because they're not the youngest one. There's all this tension around the youngest child having to quote unquote perform and sing. What is ultimately now singing Manishtha Nihalala? Is that to lead the four questions? So I don't know where that tradition comes from, but I do think this is the point that everyone has a role, everyone has to be engaged.

In fact, even the youngest person, that six or seven or eight year old at the table, has a role and has to be in it. So much so that these four questions that you're setting right now, they have to take the lead on. Correct. And it's also, I mean, the whole point is that we're trying to do unusual things to peak the curiosity and interest of those children. Because if we have the obligation to tell our children on that night what happened to us, then the children have to be involved, engaged, curious and wanting to know.

Otherwise, we haven't fulfilled our obligation. Now, the truth is, your obligation can be filled by saying in one sentence, this is the night that God saved us. We were in pain and God saved us. And you've now outside of your obligation, you've done it. But we generally try very hard to say, well, here are the things that seem unusual. And I would actually say all the more so this year.

Last year was horrific. This year, I think, is more horrific for obvious reasons and not obvious reasons. But I would say every single person who is going to a Seder this year should have on the Seder plate either whatever is going to really pique the interest of every single person at your Seder, even if the youngest person at your Seder is 45, it should be the masking tape with the number, should be stuck on the seder plate. A lemon that's yellow, bitter, sour, hard to eat, hard to swallow, should be on your seder plate. An unopened yellow flower that should be in water but isn't in water and is just sort of becoming limp and lifeless on your seder plate. I think that there's so much opportunity

and that we have actually an obligation this year to really beat ourselves up at the Seder. I really truly believe that. And I'm feeling a lot of tension and trepidation going into this holiday because the whole point of Passover, it is supposed to be a commemoration of leaving the worst form of bondage and slavery that we ever experienced. And how can we do that this year when we know there are 59 people who are still there, 24 of whom are alive?

Alive and in the worst, most horrific bondage that we can picture. How? How do we have this commemoration when these boys, these men are there? You're saying integrate this moment in the Seder moment. I think it absolutely has to be integrated. I actually would even go so far as, I don't even know that we need four questions I think this year there's one question and one question only and the question is why are they still there? I Want to come back to you?

Just because I just think it's important for our listeners and viewers to just understand how you come at all of this which includes Something that I did not know what you just said a moment ago Which is that you did not grow up religious. No. So, I know you as someone who is very Jewishly literate and you've been a professional Jewish educator. So, how did you become that? What happened?

Given that you weren't raised with that. I took the wrong turn. Funny thing happened on the way to the theater. I grew up in a very Jewish and Zionistic household in that our Judaism was, our identity was defined by feeling connected to Israel, but we were not an observant family. And then accidentally, I ended up going to an Orthodox Jewish high school for a lot of different

reasons that didn't have to do with religious reasons. My parents just were very worried about what was happening in the schools that they had thought I was going to go to. I grew up in downtown Chicago and I ended up in this wonderful Jewish Orthodox high school. But in order to prepare me for that experience for eighth grade, they sent me to an Orthodox day school in Skokie. And that was my entrance to this incredible universe of observant Judaism.

And in order to help me catch up, they had tutors who helped me, rabbis who normally wouldn't have the patience for the questions, I was very much asking, digging, constantly wanted to know more. And I just fell in love with that community and that world. So I started to take on different Jewish observances way before my parents did. And so, I ended up in Israel for a year after high school before going to Brandeis. So, your gap year. My gap year, and I learned more, and I've always been hungry to catch up.

Did you study at a Yeshiva? So, no, that year I was in a program where I was at Hebrew U for a semester and then I was on an Orthodox kibbutz actually in the Gaza envelope for six months. And then I went to, and I mean, I was learning during that time, but I wasn't in a yeshiva setting. But my high school really was an Orthodox high school experience where half the day was secular studies and half the day was Jewish studies. And I was in the lowest level classes initially because I had so much of a gap, a deficit from not having that earlier.

But I really felt it was this really beautiful way of life that I desperately wanted. And I really feel blessed that I've been on this journey and on this ride of gaining more and more knowledge. I think we're all like that. And in different subjects or topics that speak to us, but for me, Judaism and religious Judaism, whatever that means, you know, ancient texts and really grappling with those texts have been something that have really brought a lot of meaning and value to my life. And after Brandeis, I ended up coming, I was in New York for a year and I studied at a

seminary in New York called Dresha, part-time while I was also in graduate school. And then I ended up coming to Israel for what I thought was a six week program at the Pardes Institute, which is for post university Jewish learning. And I ended up staying there for five years. Wow. And it was during that time that I re-met John,

cause he was also from Chicago and he had also been at that Orthodox day school for high school. And I remembered him right away because John Pollan was a very good basketball player in high school. So when I ran into him on the street in Jerusalem, the first thing I thought is, oh, look, it's that guy. I know him and he's a good basketball player. And John was blessed to have grown up in an observant Jewish family. And so I thought he was

the cat's meow. Okay. So the Haggadah contains a line that let me say a couple things. One, contains a lot of lines. It contains a lot of lines. One, there's a word that we constantly say throughout the Seder, which is Zachor. Yes. Memory. We see that word, I think, during Pesach, during the Seder, probably more than we at any other time in the Hebrew calendar and in any holiday. So why memory, Zachor, Zachor, Zachor? Like, why is this everywhere in the Seder? You know, we have a funny relationship with remembering we Jews, I'd even say all people, because remembering can be very grounding, or it can be very drowning.

We have to be very careful with what we do with how we remember things. It is self-defining. Who are you? Don't forget where you come from. Don't forget what you're made of. Don't forget what you believe in. Don't forget what you believe in. Don't forget what your values are. And on the other hand, if you're only looking back to define yourself, because time unfortunately flows forward and our trajectory is forward,

if we're not looking forward and allowing ourselves to also be who we're going to be, not just be who we've been, then we end up hitting the present or the future with the back of our head, and we're not ready. So I think that there's that tension in the Haggadah of, remember where you came from? You were slaves. You were no one. You were the lowest of the low. And actually, there's a debate in the Haggadah of where do you begin telling the story? In the section called Magid, which is the storytelling part, where do you start the story? And there's a debate between two rabbis, right? Hudathankat, there'd be a debate between two rabbis. One says you start it with the story of the slavery in Egypt and the other says, no, you

have to start it way, way, way back before when Abraham's father owned an idol store. He owned Idols R Us. We were idolaters. And there's the question of why would we start it there? And it's the stereotypical Hollywood answer of, you know, you want to start the backstory, you got to start it way back, right? Like at the Godfather, like he starts way back.

Because then the excitement of where we end up is so much more dramatic. We start the story talking about that we actually used to be idolaters. We didn't even understand that there was one God running the show. We have to remember that we come from a place where we didn't always understand that there was some one God running the show. We have to remember that we come from a place where we didn't always understand that there was godliness, that there was a rhyme to this reason. And then the story takes off from there. And there are so many different parts also,

there's one of everybody's favorite songs is Dienou. Explain. Well, Dienou means it would have been enough for us. I think it's 14 verses of explaining what steps were taken in order to be redeemed. And along the way, we keep saying, if God had only done this, it would have been enough. If God had only done, now the truth is, I don't know that we mean that. We don't mean if you had just brought us to the tip of the Red Sea, but you hadn't opened it up, it would have been enough.

I actually think that would have been a big bummer. But what we're trying to say, I think the whole point of the Haggadah is actually it's this gratitude training workshop. And sometimes in life, we have to be able to stop even when we haven't won the whole lottery. And we have to be able to say, I am blessed. I'm blessed right here. And that I think is the message of Dayenu is we have to be able to stop and acknowledge that maybe we don't have it all, but what we have is a blessing. There is a line in the Haggadah that feels especially haunting today, which is, and I

quote, in every generation they rise up against us to destroy us. That feels like when you look at the sweep of Jewish history, it's obviously easy to internalize that narrative. But at least before October 7th, you kind of, we all looked at that and said, more or less, I mean, there are incidents, obviously, before October 7th in the last couple of decades, but it didn't feel like, quote unquote, they were rising up against us. And this feels like more than just a narrative that we internalize and recite. You could say it was a prophetic warning, you could say it's a self-fulfilling narrative

or self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, how do you think about that line? It's interesting because I think there's so many lines that we were constantly as parents or educators or peers trying to imagine and create meaning and mash meaning into it. And now, given what's happened since October 7th, there's no room for imagination. In fact, I'd like a lobotomy. I literally, you know, I'm in therapy now because since Hirsch was killed, it's like now there's actually time because during the 330 days that he was stolen, there was no

time to do any sort of self-care. So now there's still no time, but we're doing some self care. And I said to my therapist, can you give me amnesia? He said, everybody wants it. Everyone who's been through trauma wants amnesia. And that's what's so painful about this line is we would have to kind of convince people at the Seder five years ago, 10 years ago. We tried to make it into metaphors. It's not that people are coming after us.

It's like, is it a vice? Is it the internet? Is it social media? Trust me, it's so funny you're saying this because I mean, in retrospect, it seems so pathetic. I hadn't thought of it until you just said that, but a number of my Syrs before October 7th, we'd get our kids to talk about pressures they feel.

Right, what enslaves you? What is making you not be your true self? Okay, well now, unfortunately, this is so in your face, so bombastic, and it's very complicated to sort of reign it in. I mean on its most basic surface level, it certainly seems that some sort of force really did their job of rising up against us on October 7th. What I would say is that if someone decides to take that at its face value, then I actually think our answer is that's their job.

Our job is to save ourselves. There's another line in the Haggadah I want to ask you about, and I'll quote here, if the Holy One, blessed be He, hadn't brought our fathers out of Egypt, then we and our children would still be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. So there's a lot going on there, but it does feel to some degree like it's asking us to have a practical here and now attitude to how we see the enslavement.

And you said something in a podcast, in the 1840 podcast, you said, you have to pray like it all depends on God, and you have to work like it all depends on you. What did you mean by that? Well, I learned that from Johnny Moore, Reverend Johnny Moore. I think that that is the prototypical, the Jewish joke of there was a man and he's waiting on the roof of his house

because there's a huge flood. He's shouting out to God saying, save me, save me. And someone comes by with a rowboat and says, get in. And he says, no, no, I'm waiting for God. And then, you know, a helicopter comes with a ladder and says, climb up the ladder. And he says, no, no, I'm waiting for God. And then the floodwaters come and they cover him

and he dies and he goes up to heaven. And he says to God, what the heck? I was shouting up to heaven and he says to God what the heck I was Shouting out you and praying and God said I send you a boat. I said you're a helicopter What do you want from me? You know and that is so when when Johnny Moore said that to me that is what came to mind is that? We have to do both. I as someone who believes in God has to do both I think it would be very unfair to say to someone who doesn't believe in the idea of God, you have to pray to God and you have to work hard.

That would be religiously coercive, which would be like telling someone not to do something on Shabbat if they wanted to do something on Shabbat, like drive to you if you were in the North last year. But I really do feel that. I feel that every morning when I'm praying and I'm praying and I'm crying and I'm praying, I didn't know, I thought at a certain point I'd run out of tears and it's unbelievable. And even I went to the dermatologist last week. I said, what is this? He said, you have got to stop crying. It's like you're destroying your body, but I can't help it.

I can't help it because my children are there. Your children are there. My husband is there. Your spouse is there. Our parents are there. I can't stop crying and I can't stop working because I think that we have to do both And so I think that that's what that line is really talking about We have to be shouting up and shouting forward and not stopping you talked earlier about the four sons

Can you just quickly tick through the four sons? And by the way, just for listeners, these are the four sons that are described as coming to the Seder in the Haggadah. They're described and they represent four different categories. You know, there's one that's the wise one, the one that wants to engage and really learn and is curious. They call the second one the wicked one.

I actually think he's just the devil's advocate or the one who actually is very smart, but may feel a little disenfranchised. We all had that boy in our class or that girl in our class who was just a little bit too smart. And then there's the simple one who might ask like a very, very basic question. And then there's the one that's just not asking. And it might be that they, we say they don't know how to ask. It might be that they're shy. They know how to ask. They're not comfortable. They may be at a table with people they've

never met before and they're just not comfortable. And again ask, they're not comfortable. They may be at a table with people they've never met before, and they're just not comfortable. And again, these don't have to be children. They're just personality types. They're different types of people and different types of learners. So the one who does not know how to ask is the one I've been thinking about

because there are a lot of young Jews today around the world, especially in the diaspora, who are really uncertain of how to engage with their Judaism and their Jewish identity, because it hasn't been the catastrophe that you and the Israelis people have suffered for Jews in the diaspora. But let's just say it's been highly unnerving. If you're a Jew living around the world, I interact with a lot of young Jews. I know you interact with a lot of young Jews. I know you interact with a lot of young Jews.

I think a lot of those Jews don't know how to ask. They don't know if Judaism is worth the burden, is worth the hassle. So I'm putting all of them in that category, in the one who doesn't know how to ask, because I think people do look to you, because you have provided a lot of wisdom, not just the Jewish wisdom in the face of trauma

and human catastrophe that you were personally experiencing. And that not only have you hung on to your Judaism, it's part of what's navigating you to some degree, I think. I don't want to put words in your mouth. I'm just actually asking. So what do you say to the Jew who doesn't know how to ask? Well, first of all, I think I would say I get it. I think sometimes when there is huge tragedy,

huge inexplicable pain and suffering, sometimes there's just silence. And we even see that actually there's precedent for that. Aaron, who was Moses' brother in the Bible, his older brother, something happens and both of his sons are killed in one second he had two sons and they're gone and his response is silence and The commentators say sometimes that's the response

Sometimes it's so bad and it's so perplexing and it's so confounding that the only answer is silence and So I don't blame, yes, we're talking about young people, but I mean, anyone, I don't blame anyone saying, I have no idea what is going on. I don't know how to engage. And I don't think I want to engage. I even understand that because the dissonance is so thick. I wake up time and time during the day, I am awake, but I reawaken and I think, what is happening? It feels unreal, what we're going through. And so I would just, first of all,

I would really validate people who feel like they don't even know what to do. I would say, I get it. I also don't know what to do. And then I really do think that there's room to just try to walk in where there are other people who also don't know what to do. Because there's something about being together that can be very affirming. And again, it can be silent. I have noticed this when I get together with these hostage mothers at what is called here Mishmeret Me'eh V'Echad, which is the Shift 101, which is a gathering. It started out as women wearing white, being silent, coming together and just sitting in the street. And now it's thousands of people, men and women, you don't have to wear white, who come together

and just sit because there's been so much shouting and so much crying and so much screaming and so much pain and so much praying and so much rhetoric and so much debate. And finally, mothers said, we are just coming together to sit for our children and wives came for their children and their spouses. And we talk a lot, obviously, the hugest, most urgent critical issue of these 59 people. We know that 24 of them are alive, but we know 35 of them need to come home for proper burial. And when you sit silently, there is power in that silence.

And I will also say that is prayer. That is absolutely prayer. And so many people say, I'm not religious. I do this and this and this, I'm not religious. First of all, there's no judgment. None of us are religious and all of us are religious. They're labels, they mean nothing. Forget it. But it's such a holy, beautiful, sacred moment when people come together in pain, silent.

So I'd encourage people to try to do that. And just to go back for one moment to talk about the 35 people that have been confirmed dead who are still being held, who are mothers and sisters and daughters and spouses and sons and brothers and grandpas and grandmas, you know, actually, and four of them are US citizens, I should say, you know, Yitai Han and Omer Nutra and Gad and Judy. When we were talking about Dayenu before, It will sound so hard to understand, I think. I feel Dianu that I got to bury Hirsch because I have all of these friends now

whose children are there. They don't have a place to go. John and I just visited Hirsch's grave last week and we got back in the car and John said, it is so unbelievable and shitty that this is where we have to come to see him. But it's so comforting that we have a place and we are so lucky. And that is how upside down the world is right now. And that's why it's very difficult for me to be going into this holiday because we're

actually lucky. When I speak to American officials, they're often struck who spend time with hostage families. I've heard this repeatedly. They're struck by American government officials by the lengths some families want to go to get their loved ones back to Israel, even if they're dead. And we mentioned that it's a hand Ruby can have said, he said to me, I think he said this publicly, so I'm comfortable quoting him, but he has said something to me along the lines of, I don't know what I'll do if I'm just told to learn to live with the fact that someday in a rebuilt Gaza, my son's body is buried underneath some skyscraper. And so I've used that line when I've spoken to US officials in this administration

about why, yes, it's traumatic and awful and every awful word you can come up with to talk about losing someone as a result of October 7th, but it still matters to get them home. Well, I'll tell you two things on that point. The first thing is that in Judaism, according to our tradition, we feel very strongly that the body is the vessel that holds our neshamah, that holds our soul. The soul is what is holy and sacred and beautiful and lives eternally, but it is encased in this body while we're in this world. And when the soul leaves the body, when the nishama leaves the body, it's almost like there are these holy vapors that are left in this casing,

in this suitcase that's been holding this beautiful, God-kissed gift that we've had. And so we believe that the body has a holiness to it and has to be treated in a very sacred specific way. And the way that the body is prepared for burial, according to Jewish law, is very specific and it's very ritualized. And that's what the burial society does. And I actually, for seven years, when we lived in Berkeley, California, I was part of the burial society and I used to prepare women who had died, I would prepare their bodies for their burial. And there's a way that you wash the body and that you dress the body in certain burial shrouds. So this is also, it's that we feel that it is the ultimate chesed, It's the ultimate act of loving kindness

that you can do for someone is once their soul has left their body, is that you give them a proper burial. This is a tenant of our belief system. So it's not just this idea of, oh, I want my child's body back. This is ingrained in the DNA of who we are. That's number one. The other thing I will tell you, and this is extremely, I think, complicated for people to hear, is when we were burying Hirsch, right before we went

to bury him, the men who had prepared Hirsch's body. I didn't know this happened. They came and they asked John if they could talk to him for a minute. So I was waiting in the car and John went with these people and I didn't know what he did. And I only found out that night, he said, they took him into the van where they had Hirsch and they said, we want you to look at his face

and identify him. Now they unwrapped his face because we have burial shrouds. So he was wrapped and in Jerusalem, in most of Israel, but in Jerusalem, you don't bury people in coffins. You bury them just wrapped in burial shrouds, and the men are wearing wrapped in a talit, a prayer shawl. So they unwrap this little shawl and they unwrap the shroud that was covering his face. And they showed John Hirsch his face. And I said to John, I'm so sorry you had to do that. But I'm so glad that you did because I don't think I'd believe it if you hadn't do that. But I'm so glad that you did, because I don't think I'd believe it

if you hadn't seen him." And he said, Rachel, I saw him and I don't believe it. And so what I'm telling you is that it's incredibly important. People will never believe it because would you ever want to believe that your son was gone? So even these people who are told, your daughter, she died on October 7th. They have her body. Your grandmother, your mother, your wife, she died on whatever date and they have her body. Human vitality and resilience and optimism makes it so we don't want to believe that that's true. And so that's another, yet another reason why we need these people back aside from the fact that it's part of our religious tradition. It's also just a psychological way of saying, you have your person. Here's where they now are. You can go and visit

this place. And I had a rabbi contact me who both his parents were Auschwitz survivors and He told me he said first of all part of why this has been so horrific for you Is that your son was a Holocaust survivor who was then killed which was a very intriguing way of describing Hirsch someone else asked me recently we were in America and someone said oh I heard you are the daughter of Holocaust survivors How does it feel that your son went through this horrible experience? And I said, well, my mother was born in Detroit and my father was born in Gary, Indiana. So I'm actually not a Holocaust survivor child. But what I am is the parent of a Holocaust survivor. And that really is what I feel like. I feel that Hirsch survived the Holocaust. He did every single thing right, and then he was killed. And those beautiful

five who were with him, also, they did every single thing right. They were Holocaust survivors and then they were killed. But I understand from this rabbi, he was saying, until each of his parents died many, many years after the Holocaust, he said they never were able to move forward. They never had a place to go. Their parents had both been killed. All their siblings were killed. One of his parents had been married and had children before who were killed in the Holocaust before. These things are extremely important for how do we move forward. How do we move forward, not just the 59 families. How do we as a people, as a nation, as a species move forward when we know that this horrific

thing happened and we know that these people are being held as bargaining chips. People who are alive and the people who were killed and taken in order to torment their families. I want to ask you about that because this is your second Passover without Hirsch. The last one he was alive, but he was taken hostage and this Passover he's dead. Just last year's Seder, and I guess I could ask the same question about how you're approaching this Seder. When you look at the words on the page, when you look at the Haggadah, it's one thing to read it,

as you said, like, although it's just a normal ritual. It's another thing to read it when it feels like, for you, time stopped. You sit at the Seder table, is it like you're just going through the motions, because you have to, because you're an observant Jew? Or, are you like, give me a break, how do I do this? Is it like you're just going through the motions because like you have to because you're an observant jew or How you like give me a break? How do I do this? How do we because you take ideas seriously

You take religious ideas seriously And this is a story of religious ideas and religious and jewish history and you're looking at and you're like What do I do with this? Well last year and this year, we will also be with them. Our closest dearest friends are Rabbi Rob and Kamei Khan. And Rob, Rabbi Rob, is a very wise, sensitive, compassionate person who in the most elegant way made last year's Seder exactly what it needed to be. And so it was extremely delicately orchestrated. We did exactly what we had to do and not more.

We all cried. There was not one person at the Seder who did not cry. The Codden family was there and our cousins, Elliot and Rebecca and their children were there and all of us were sobbing. And we were all very aware that Hirsch was in Egypt, in slavery, in bondage. And we were as well. And it was very real and it was very beautiful and it was excruciating. And that is what it was supposed to be.

And I think the difference this year, obviously that Hirsch is now never gonna be at a Seder with us again in this world. The fact that he's dead is obviously the hugest difference. But last year, there were two things. First of all, we had hope that he was going to come home and that that was just going to be the only year that we were ever without Hirsch at Seder. But the second thing is we were guessing about the torment he was enduring.

And all of a sudden, what has become extremely difficult for me, especially in these last few weeks, is with the recently released hostages coming home and their testimony, we now know what they are going through. And it is horrific. It is not digestible. It is true insanity to listen to Elie Sharabi describing what he went through, to listen to Or Levy, to listen to Elia Cohen, to listen to these young women who were released, who were in the room next to Matan Angarist, to now know that is very different, to now know that Alon Ohel is by himself with shrapnel in his eye he can't see out of one of his

eyes. It's in one of his hands. He was on his way to music school. He's a talented pianist to know that he's by himself, to know that Matan Angarist now has an arm that's completely lame because it was so badly damaged in the torment that he's endured, that his face is no longer symmetrical, that he sounds cavitonic when he's speaking, that you have Evyatar David, who you as a glasses wearer can appreciate. They took his glasses away.

He's blind without his glasses. He can't see anything. He and his best friend, Guy Gilboa Dalal. Guy is deaf in one ear now. We know this, that those two boys are being held with bags on their head, 24-7. They don't even eat without the bags on their head. They don't see what they're given to eat. All of them are in shackles, shackles, chains, all of them. How do we digest this going into this Seder? And that's where I realize the torture that the parents are going through of the 24 hostages

who we know are still alive. That torture even I have never experienced because we didn't know when Hirsch was being held. We didn't know when Hirsch was being held. We didn't know there were people in the intelligence world here and in America who did know they were privy to that. They didn't share that with the families and we now know because hostages are coming home and Yarden B. Baaz is describing what he went through and what he saw.

And Tal Shoaham is explaining to the parents of Evyatar and Guy what he saw when he was with them. Keith Siegel saying that they made him watch them sexually torturing a female hostage. Yes, yes. So now that we know that makes it all the more impossible to wrap our minds around, how do we pretend that, okay, it's Pesach, it's Passover, let's all have a great Seder, and I am so conflicted about it. And even coming to talk to you today about this, I was really trepidatious.

And John said to me, no, go and talk to Dan and go and tell everyone you are to have a terrible, terrible satyr. Make sure you cry at that satyr, every single one of you, or you have not fulfilled your obligation as having seen yourself as having been in Egypt, like Evyatar and like Idan and like Tamir and like David and like Ariel and like Alon and like Matan Zankauker. This year, you know, we normally dip a hard-boiled egg into salt water. One of the symbols that's on the Seder plate is an egg for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's used to remind us of one of the sacrifices that was given that was roasted,

but also an egg is a symbol of life and it's, you know, circular life-death symbol. And saltwater is, of course, reminding us of the tears that the Jewish people were crying when they were in this horrible Bondage and affliction and so we dip the egg into the salt water this year I think we should pass the salt water around and Everybody should take a sip of the tears that we should all be tasting and crying and also because Tal Shoaham said that the water that they got every day that was only a half a cup of water He said it was salt water in Gaza when they're being held hostage when he was being held hostage He was just released. Yeah, you know during this phase the deal that we had of the 33 that started in January

He said the water tastes like salt water. It's either that it's filled with iron, it's not clean, or that it's actual salt water. He said, it was almost impossible to swallow it, but when it's all that you have, you force yourself. And I feel like we should all be forcing ourselves to have one sip of what these people are drinking daily. to have one sip of what these people are drinking daily while we are at our seders, they will be in a dank, dark, dungeness tunnel

having nothing except maybe their tears. Rich, I want to close by talking about some of these hostages that have been freed that you have spent time with, which you've told me a little bit about, some of whom were with Hirsch. How did those encounters shape your own journey, learning from them about their time with Hirsch? How's that shaped your own understanding

of the journey you've been on? So we were very blessed that Orlevy, who was in the same bomb shelter as Hirsch and on the same pickup truck that Hirsch was on, the UN pickup truck that he was kidnapped in, Orlevy was released with Elie Sharabi and Ohad Ben Ami. And he actually asked to meet us. We had heard he was released on a Saturday and on day 491 and his brother, Michael, who we had gotten to know throughout this struggle because we went to Rome together and we were at various advocacy events with him, he actually called John right after Shabbat on that Saturday

of day 491 and he said, I just want to let you know that when I hugged Orr, one of the very first things he asked me is how is Hirsch? And he said he would like a few days and then he would like to meet you. And so on day 496, John and I went to the hospital where Orr was being kept. Obviously, he was in really terrible shape. Those were the three men who came out looking truly like they had been released from a concentration camp. Orr is about John's height, John's six feet tall, and Orr weighed 50 kilo when we met him, which I think is about 110 pounds. It was so godly meeting him.

It was meeting someone who really, it felt like I was meeting someone who returned from the dead. He has a beautiful spirit. He turned to us. I assumed we were going to talk to him in Hebrew and God bless him as we walked into this room Just the three of us. He didn't want anyone else there He turns to me and he says would you like me to speak in English and I said in Hebrew. Oh, no, it's okay We could speak in Hebrew. It's good for me to practice and he says in gorgeous English

I really have good English and John said great. Let's speak in English and he told us about the English, I really have good English. And John said, great, let's speak in English. And he told us about the kidnapping itself and being in the truck and all of these mysterious black holes that we didn't know about and that we were always guessing about. He was able to fill in a lot of information for us. So he explained to us that when they went in to, and I'm leaving a lot out, but I'm sharing some, when they pulled into Gaza and the truck was surrounded by thousands of Gazans who were beating them with two by fours and throwing shoes at them and all sorts of things, that Hirsch was covered completely in a blanket and taken

off the truck, which led the others in the truck to believe that Hirsch had bled out from his injury, from his arm, and that he had died. And that's why they thought that they had taken Hirsch. On day 52, Hirsch ended up in the same tunnel as Or Levy, Eliak Cohen, and Elie Sharabi. And Or and Hirsch started to talk. They didn't recognize each other because there was so much pandemonium and chaos and there was no time in the bomb shelter to say, oh, hi, my name's Rachel. I'm from Chicago.

Where are you from? You know, there was no chit chat. It was total pandemonium. 18 people were killed. Hirsh's hand got blown off Which or was the one who told us his hand got blown off while he was holding a grenade trying to throw it out We had never known that we knew his forearm had been blown off, but we didn't know how He said when they realized who each other was they jumped up and they hugged each other realized who each other was, they jumped up and they hugged each other, which also was really meaningful to me because when I hugged Orr, I realized Orr is the last living person

who touched Hirsch. And so when I touch Orr, and I've seen him again since then, I feel the remnants of my Hirsch. And he told us how Hirsch had said this line from Victor Frankl of, "'When you have a why, you will figure out a how. When you have a why, you will figure out a how.'" And so for Or, he said, like, "'You have a why, you have a son,

you have to figure out how you're getting out of here because you've got a lot to live for.'" And Elie Sharabi subsequently told us that Hirsch also said that line to him. And Elie told us that Hersh also said that line to him. And Ellie Akowin said he said that line to him, that he was constantly saying it. And what's so intriguing for me is when Hersh left that tunnel three days later, those men continued saying that line every single day and they would talk about with each other, what's our why? What's going to get us through for the next 450 days?

And he said, the last day I said it was Saturday morning when I woke up on day 491. And he said, when I'm strong enough, because this was day 496, he said, I'm getting it tattooed on my arm. And when I saw him last week, he saw me from across the room and he said like this, and he goes like this. And he shows me and here in English, he has the sentence that Hirsch was quoting from Victor Frankl. And he had it tattooed on his arm in English, which is like a wink to Hirsch. So a lot has been filled in because I kept thinking, maybe Hirsch was broken. Like, he had seen 18 people murdered in front of his eyes, including his beloved dear friend,

Honor Shapira, in front of him, blown up. He had his own arm blown off. I thought, maybe he broke. But what I found out from these men who were with him, he wasn't broken. He was giving them encouragement with this line, but not just that, but Bohr told us Hirsch was laughing, Hirsch was joking. And a lot of other information and the other thing he told us, which gave us great comfort is he said, Ori Danino was with Hirsch from day one.

Ori Danino is the one who made sure that Hirsch was okay, because Hirsch was not treated as we thought on the first day. Hirsch was bleeding to death. And on the third day, when he was basically almost dead, Ori Danino got him. He was screaming at the captors saying, he's going to die and he's worth so much more alive. He's American. You got to get him treated." And he ended up getting treated in a hospital, a real surgery.

And he was with Ory from day one until day 328 when he was killed with Ory next to him on his left. And Ory told us the whole time that they were together for those days in that tunnel, when they overlapped in the same tunnel, he said he and Ori were like brothers. He said they were together next to each other the entire time. That gives me tremendous comfort because when Hirsch was found on day 330, he was found on Eden Yerushalmi.

They were face to face and on his left was Ori Danino. And in a world that's broken, that's comfort. All right. Maybe I'll just ask you one last question because I really don't know how to say goodbye to you right now because normally every other person, every other Jew I speak to these days, I say a hug, pay such some air, hug Sameach, wishing people literally Sameach, happy holiday. What are people saying to you these days

in the lead up to Pesach? What do you say? What should I say to you now? I raise exactly. Tell me how to talk to you right now. How about we should all have a meaningful Pesach. We should all have a Pesach that, each of the holidays has a nickname

and Pesach is called Chag Ha Chayrut, which means the holiday of freedom. There is still time, Dan. There is still time. In Hasidut, in the Hasidic tradition, there's this saying that you wish people to have things Kehereth Ayin in the blink of an eye. And we've seen it happen. We've seen in these last 548 days. Things do happen in the blink of an eye. And we've seen it happen. We've seen in these last 548 days, things do happen in

the blink of an eye. And this can change. We don't know what's going to happen in these next few days. There can be a decision that, you know what? We're getting these 59 people back and it will happen. When there is a will to make it happen, it will happen. So I pray for all of us, a true holiday of freedom, a true holiday of meaning, and a true time of figuring out what is our why, what is our why, and then we will figure out the how. Caharifying. Caharifying. Thank you, Rachel.

Thanks, Dan. That's our show for today. If you or your organization are interested in sponsoring Call Me Back, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach us at callmebackatarkmedia.org. That's callmebackatarkmedia.org. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with others who you think may appreciate it.

Time and again, we've seen that our listeners are the ones driving the growth of the Call Me Back community, so thank you. To offer comments, suggestions, sign up for updates, or explore past episodes, visit our website arcmedia.org. That's ARKmedia.org, where you can also find transcripts with hyperlinked resources which will hopefully help you deepen your own understanding of the topics we cover. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Alain Benatar. Additional editing by Martin Huérgaux.

ARK Media's executive editor is Yardena Schwartz. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semmo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Sinor.