The Secret to Jewish Continuity – Dr. Jaclyn Novatt’s D’var Torah (First Day of Passover 04/02/26)

Dear Friends,

For the first three days of the Passover, we were blessed to hear words of Torah and inspiration from three of our members.

Jaclyn Novatt spoke about the secret of Jewish continuity. Paul Konisgstein showed us how the Hagaddah is rooted in gratitude and how we can integrate these teachings into our daily lives. Brian Kohn taught us the lesson of Chol HaMoed: appreciating the gift and holiness of the non-miraculous days.

We’ll send out Paul’s and Brian’s speeches in the next two days.

On Wednesday, Shi’vii Shel Pesach, we’ll hear from Linda Brickman, and on Thursday, Marc Liss will share his thoughts on Yizkor.

I’m so grateful to our two new ritual chairs, Jackie Novatt and Michael Pinck, for arranging our speakers. They not only lightened my Passover burdens but also granted us new perspectives on the Holiday. Enjoy.

Wishing you a joyous Passover,

R’ Neil

The Secret to Jewish Continuity

With thanks to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks for posting the video that sent me down this rabbit hole, and thanks to my cousin Rachel for sharing the video with me, I have a question…. What do Hamilton and Pesach have in common?

Let’s start with Pesach. Moses is considered one of the greatest leaders of all time. Why? He wasn’t a great public speaker – he had his brother speak for him, possibly because of a speech impediment. He wasn’t hungry for power or authority – he didn’t want to follow G-d’s instructions at first, feeling he was unworthy of the role of leader. He had his people wander for 40 years to cover a net distance of ~200 miles – not very efficient, though there were reasons for this. While he may not have been a typical leader, he was effective. He turned a group of runaway slaves into a nation that survived. We lost our land, lost our home, went through 1000+ years of diaspora, went through the threatening situations commemorated by Chanukah and Purim, went through pogroms, lost 6 million in the Holocaust, and we as a people are still here. The ancient Egyptians from Pesach are gone. The ancient Greeks from Chanukah are gone. The ancient Persians from Purim are gone. So many of the peoples that tried to destroy us are gone. But we are still here.

How did Moses do this? How did he create such a lasting nation from a group of runaway slaves? Rabbi Lord Jonnathan Sacks claims it’s due to the Haggadah – how we hand on our story to the next generation.

When Moses gathers the people together, he doesn’t talk logistics of how they’re going to escape. He doesn’t use his words to get them excited about where they’re going (the land of Milk and Honey! Imagine it!). He doesn’t do any of that. Instead, Moses talks 3 times about the duty we have to tell the story to our children.

Three times. Why does Moses focus so much on telling the story when they were living the story?

Because Moses understood that freedom is not won in a single moment – freedom must be continually fought for in every generation. How do we do that? In every generation we give our children the tools to be true to themselves and their people. These tools are:

Identity – who am I?
Values – how shall I live?
Continuity – that they are part of a story that includes us and them and our parents and their children and so on and so on

Telling the story passes on the identity, values, and continuity to our children.

We pass on identity because we tell the story as if we ourselves were among those rescued from slavery in Egypt. Because in a way, we were. If G-d had not helped rescue our ancestors, we might still be enslaved in Egypt today. Our children are a part of this group too. Identity.

Through the Passover story, we pass on the values of freedom and human dignity. We celebrate our own freedom and re-established dignity of our people while acknowledging the humanity of those who had to suffer for us to gain that freedom. Values.

We pass on continuity – our grandparents told the story to our parents, our parents told the story to us, we tell the story to our children, and we hope that they will go on to tell the story to their children. I use my mom’s cookbook, my dad’s tallit, my grandma’s flour and sugar containers and oatmeal pot, and my great grandma’s Chanukah menorah. I make my grandma’s pea soup and Mandel bread, and my other grandma’s Passover cookies. Each one of these items and recipes comes with so many stories, and one day, these will go to my children. Continuity.

Through all the years in exile, the Jewish people never stopped telling our story every year on Pesach, we never stopped passing our identity and values and a sense of continuity.

This brings me back to the question I asked at the beginning . . .

What do Hamilton and Pesach have in common? Hamilton talks about legacy.

Legacy. What is a legacy?

It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see

I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me

America, you great unfinished symphony, you sent for me

You let me make a difference

A place where even orphan immigrants

Can leave their fingerprints and rise up

I’m running out of time. I’m running, and my time’s up.

In the perspective of the universe, each individual person lives for only a short time, yet we each want to make an impact on our world. We want to leave the world better than we found it. We want the world to remember we were here, we want to leave a legacy, because when people remember you it’s almost like achieving a type of immortality. What makes people remember?

The ancient Egyptians sought remembrance and immortality through physical structures – the very same buildings and pyramids that our ancestors built from bricks made of straw and mortar. These structures and the art and artifacts and mummies inside have remained, and archeologists have learned a lot about the culture from these buildings – but the people have long since vanished from the earth. Not just the people as in individual human beings . . . the people – the culture. The ancient Egyptian culture ended in ~30 BC with the death of Cleopatra VII. Have they achieved immortality? Their buildings remain, we still learn about them, but their people . . . their culture . . . did not survive.

The Hebrews sought immortality through stories. As we said, the Torah specifically instructs us to tell the next generation the story of the Exodus from Egypt as if we, ourselves, were part of it – “and you shall tell your child on that day saying “it is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt.” We are still here, because unlike buildings, stories pass along identity, values, and continuity.

This brings me to the three questions asked at the end of Hamilton:

When you’re gone, who remembers your name? Who keeps your flame? Who tells your story?

We tell our story. We have told our story and we will keep telling our story every year. As long as our story persists, so will we.

Chag Kasher v’Sameach,

Jackie