                        The Passover Seder
                   The Original "World Order" 
                      by Gary M. Cooperberg
                                
April 1993                                           Nisan 5753
                                
     The holiday of Passover has come and gone.  Jews all over the world sat at their seder
table and read the Haggadah.  But how many really pondered the tremendous message this
ancient practice continues to hold for the Jewish people?  
     The Passover Haggadah has always been a beacon of hope to a people dispersed,
downtrodden and oppressed.  It is a capsulized history of the Jewish people, which includes
within it veritable proof of a glorious destiny.  It reminds us that, in every generation, enemies
more numerous and powerful than we, rose to destroy us.  It then tells us that, because of 
G-d's love for our father, Abraham, He always intervened to save us. This is no fairy tale. 
Secular history books are replete with examples, dating from our Exile by the Romans, of how
in every place we made our temporary home we were eventually driven out, and often beaten
and murdered in the process. 
     The very fact of our continued existence, in a world which has always sought our
destruction, is proof that the G-d of Abraham is keeping the promise He made to him, that He
would return his children to the Land of Israel as a permanent inheritance.  The incredible
reestablishment of a Jewish Homeland in the Land of Israel by the decimated remnants of a
holocaust which annihilated a full third of our tiny people, and this in spite of a world which
opposed such an event, was clear proof of the Jewish People being a living continuation of the
story set forth in the Passover Haggadah.
     How many generations completed their seder with the timeless prayer, "May we
celebrate our next seder in Jerusalem"?!  Well that prayer has been answered for a full forty-five years already.  Why do so many good Jews continue to sit in the many lands of our exile,
mouth the words of hope, yet make no effort to fulfill them?  Could it be that so many
religious Jews look at the Passover Seder as just a quaint practice, devoid of all meaning? 
Heaven forbid.
     The answers to all of the towering problems facing the world, and, especially the
Jewish People, are to be found in the Passover Haggadah.  If we would but read it, believe it
and act upon it we would bring the final redemption, swiftly and majestically, with miracles
even greater than those performed for our Fathers in Egypt.
     It is a message of more than hope, rather of Divine Destiny.  It reminds us that Jacob
went down to Egypt with but seventy souls.  We were a very very tiny minority in a strange
country.  As the Egyptians enslaved us and oppressed us, miraculously we grew in strength
and in number.  Despite this fact there was no logical way that we could ever break out of our
bondage.  
     It was not until our oppression became unbearable that we finally cried out to the G-d
of our Fathers.  Our cry penetrated the very heavens and the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, came and rescued us, gave us the Torah and brought us home to our Land.
     Can we not see that same story repeating itself in our days?  Can our slavery in the
death camps of the Nazis have been less horrid than that in Egypt?  Can our emergence from
them be less miraculous then our exodus from Egypt?  And can our return to Eretz Yisrael,
especially in our tattered condition, be anything other than the continuation of the fulfillment
of G-d's Promise to our Father Abraham?

     How then can any normal Jew as much as consider voluntarily giving away part of his
two thousand year old dream come true for false promises of those who would destroy us? 
How can any normal Jew doubt that, no matter what we choose to do, the entire Land of
Israel will soon be returned to us and the King Mashiach will soon reign here?  How can any
Jew continue to risk his very life and the future of his children by remaining in an exile which is
doomed to end very shortly?
     True, we have not yet seen complete redemption.  We endure the leadership of fools
who see nothing and seem to place us in grave jeopardy.  Yet, as we read the Haggadah and
ponder Jewish history and Jewish destiny, our faith is renewed and we know that the
redemption is unfolding daily.  It is not dependent upon our leaders, rather upon us.  The time
has come for each and every one of us to cry out to the G-d of our Fathers.  Let us learn from
the Haggadah of Passover and not wait until life becomes unbearable to call out to Him.  He
will hear our voices and save us.   He always has.  May we all have the merit to celebrate
Passover next year as a united people in the complete Land of Israel.