The Chief Rabbi’s Pesach Message 5764

Chief Rabbi Sacks' Pesach message to communities across the Commonwealth in 2004:

I sometimes wonder whether we fully realise the uniqueness of Pesach. An ancient people, exiled and enslaved, finds its freedom. That is a story that would normally be confined to history books, if indeed it featured there at all.

However, Moses at the behest of G-d, knew that in the case of Israel it must be otherwise. “Remember,” he tells the Israelites repeatedly. “Tell the story to your children. Pass it on across the generations. Relive it every year.”

Speaking at the United Nations in 1947, during the debate which brought the modern state of Israel into being, David Ben Gurion reminded his audience that, though the journey of the pilgrim fathers in the Mayflower was known to every American, how many could name the day on which they set out, or what they ate on the way? That was only 300 years previously. The Jewish journey to freedom happened three thousand years before that, he added, yet every Jew knows the date on which it began, and what food the Israelites ate.

No other nation has so cherished its history. No other faith has made memory such a religious obligation. No other people lives so actively conscious of its past. Why? Because what we forget, we place in danger. What we remember, we struggle for. That is the message for today.

For the past three and a half years – in fact since its very birth – the state of Israel has been under attack, a vile and vicious attack on several fronts, from terror to a sustained campaign of delegitimisation. A generation of young British Jews is growing up without a living memory of the battles that had to be fought for it to come into existence, and to survive. Some – especially those who have been there and know Israel well – are passionate in its defence. Others, as various research studies have shown, are losing interest.

That is why we must remember and tell the story and pass it on to our children. The birth of the modern state of Israel has no counterpart in the annals of history. Never before has a people, exiled for two thousand years, come together to begin life again as a sovereign nation in the land of its birth. In retrospect, the rebirth of the state of Israel will come to be seen as a continuation of the journey begun by Moses and the Israelites 3,300 years ago, a journey remembered every Pesach: “Next year in Israel . . . Next year in Jerusalem.”

Today, Israel needs our support in every sense. It needs our prayers, our identification with its suffering, our commitment to its people and its future. That in turn requires memory, which is quite different from newspaper headlines or images on a TV screen. Israel is part of the Pesach story, of how a persecuted people found its freedom and, with the help of G-d, fought for the right to live and build a society in the light of its ideals.

Pesach has sustained the memories and hopes of a hundred generations. May it continue to inspire our children and grandchildren to place Israel at the heart of their concerns, seeing the miracle it represents and understanding the millennial story of which it is a part.

Wishing you a chag kasher vesameach. May the Almighty bless Israel and the Jewish people with peace.