A Passover Message from Rabbi Beth Schwartz
Read community insights, advice and perspectives during Passover.
When I think back over the past year, and consider our many struggles, one of the things that has been difficult for so many of us has been exercising the freedom to remain compassionate and hopeful. We have always had this freedom, and we have relied on it in harder times than these to see us through.
Indeed, as a People, the Jewish People have a pretty good track record of survival. We are commanded to be a light to the nations, and we are free to fulfill that mitzvah in an infinite variety of ways.
We are free to reject unreasonable fear; we are free to seek scientific truth and understanding as well as emotional truth and community despite our being physically separate. We are free to love our neighbors as ourselves.
As I look ahead to this z’man heiruteinu, this season of our freedom in celebrating Passover, I am also looking forward to more physical freedom, and I am very grateful for the freedoms of heart and mind and soul that have brought me to this time again. Shehechiyanu ve-kiyemanu ve-higiyanu laz’man ha-zeh.
Rabbi Beth Schwartz is the spiritual leader of Temple Israel in Columbus, Ga.
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