Timeless Torah

It was raining hard, the roads were slick and my eyes should have been glued to the street. But with a dark, angry sky filled with heavy clouds, it was the flashing neon light that caught my attention instead. I looked up and saw, for the very first time, a sign that read, “Coconut Creek CASINO….Open 24 hours.

It’s been there for months I am told. But somehow, I’ve just never noticed. So why of all days with the festival of Pesach fast approaching do I see it now? I ask myself that very question and the answer hits me like an overcooked matzoh ball.

The Casino is the last stronghold of the once proud and mighty Seminole Indian; a warrior who tested his skills against the alligator, the panther and the other dangerous wildlife. Every day he took a chance, playing a game in which lives could be lost. Some days he came home from the hunt with the prize, some days he didn’t come home at all.

The Casino has shrunk. An adventure that had the entire Everglades as its playing field is now comfortably contained in an air conditioned hall. The danger too has for the most part disappeared. All that is left is the gamble.

It might be instructive to compare the ritual of the hunt to the ceremony of the Pesach Seder. The first observation that must come to mind is the longevity of the Jewish tradition. What started out as a meal of liberation for a persecuted group of slaves dwelling near the Nile has crossed the Seven Seas and is now practiced in every corner of the globe.

A second comment that bears mention is the fact that danger is still part of the equation. Maybe not for the Jew in America, but for his brother and sister in Iran, living as a Jew still poses a very real threat. (Parenthetically, at this time 13 Iranian Jews are on trial who are ridiculously being accused of espionage. One of them is obviously the Rabbi.) Still the Jew meticulously plays his part and is not deterred from his faith.

But it is the third characteristic of the Seder that deserves the biggest applause. Not its staying power (although quite impressive), nor its devotees (although quite admirable), but as its name suggests, its order.

Even though Jewish history has at times relied solely on the miraculous intervention of a Higher Power, our destiny is not haphazard. Indeed, as any student of our past will soon realize, there is a methodical symmetry to the way G-d arranges His wonders and our lives.

Even the Exodus which occurred with such rapidity was filled with order. The Paschal Lamb was prepared four days prior to it being needed. The matzoh that didn’t have time to rise was in fact ordered by Heaven already two weeks before the actual redemption.

But the order of the elaborate feast and the Hagaddah is more than a staged repetition of our past glory. As the prophet Isaiah proclaims concerning the final Exodus from our present exile, “You will not leave in haste.” So while our ancestors may have not been given an opportunity to absorb the significance of each hurried step that led from Egypt, we who have been celebrating Seders for years without end will appreciate our long and arduous journey as an odyssey of order and meaning.

This then is the real task of the Seder; to create an annual reorganization and evaluation of our national goal. Thus, our meticulous planning of the feast is not designed merely as a leisurely stroll down memory lane, but rather to create and impose a new order - one that will usher in a World of G-dliness. And that prize can only be won at a Seder table, and not at a crap table.