We are in the danger zone - The Jewish Standard

For much of history, the weeks surrounding the beginning of the month of Nisan comprised the most dangerous period of the year for Jews. (Nisan, which began on Thursday, March 19, is the true start of the Jewish year, according to Exodus 12:2.) From the Middle Ages through to this very day, this season has been marked with recurring acts of violence against us, our communities, and our communal institutions.

Again and again, the period approaching Pesach — “the Festival of Freedom” that we celebrate in mid-month — became a time when we Jews braced ourselves for danger rather than preparing to experience joy. Riots, expulsions, and the infamous blood libels erupted so often during these weeks that Jewish communities across Europe learned to dread the season even as they prepared to celebrate freedom.

That level of danger has diminished in the modern era, but the danger has not disappeared. In the Netherlands this month, during the weekend prior to Nisan’s arrival, for example, explosive devices were detonated in front of a Rotterdam synagogue, and in Amsterdam, just under 24 hours later, another device targeted the largest Orthodox Jewish day school in the Netherlands. No one was in either building when the explosions occurred.

Elsewhere in the world, antisemitic incidents were reported in the United Kingdom (highlighted by large demonstrations in which crowds chanted such slogans as “Burn, burn Tel Aviv”), France (including the assault of a 14-year-old Jewish girl near Paris), Canada (three separate synagogue shootings in the Toronto area, one on March 2 and two on March 7) and several here in the United States (including a vehicle ramming attack at Temple Israel in metro Detroit and assaults on visibly identifiable Jews in and around Los Angeles County). These incidents may not have approached the scale of the violence that scarred Jewish history in earlier centuries, but they are unsettling.

Behind most of these incidents lurks “the messiah.”

Rather than being a deliverer of the Jews from exile, throughout our history, beginning at least in the Middle Ages, “the messiah” became the excuse for raining death and destruction on our heads. The “messiah” associated with those days, of course, is Jesus. Christian preachers inflamed congregations with accusations that we were collectively guilty of killing Jesus. Some also accused us of kidnapping Christian children to kill them and use their blood for our “Passover rituals.” Riots followed. Sometimes entire Jewish communities were destroyed.

The three most dangerous days were the Christian observances of Good Friday, Holy Saturday (or “the Great Sabbath” in Eastern Orthodox sects, deliberately meant to mimic our Shabbat HaGadol before Pesach), and Easter Sunday. This year, those days fall on the 16th, the 17th, and the 18th of Nisan (April 3-5 on this year’s secular calendar), meaning during the first half of Pesach.

Even the blood libel still is with us. It originated in England in the mid-12th century, and now has a home in Arab and Russian propaganda, and on social media postings on X, TikTok, and other platforms.

The dangers aside, the opening weeks of the Jewish year also form something of an emotional roller coaster for us — and the shadow of “the messiah” — our version, in this case — can be seen here, as well.

On the one hand, this season contains some of the most hopeful moments on the Jewish calendar. Not only were we freed from slavery on Pesach, but that event gave birth to the concept of freedom for everyone. And it is just a few weeks later that we celebrate Yom Haatzmaut and the truly miraculous rebirth of a Jewish state on the soil of the Land of Israel.

In between the two, however, comes the sadness of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, when we publicly honor the memory of our Six Million martyrs, slaughtered by Nazi Germany and its collaborators while the rest of the world stood by and watched. It is a solemn day of mourning and moral reckoning. (Yom Haatzmaut comes a week later.)

Freedom, catastrophe, and rebirth — all appearing within a span of only a few weeks — is what makes this period an emotional roller coaster.

Even the spiritual themes of Pesach itself reflect this tension between past redemption and future hope, which is where “the messiah” comes in — this time for good as well as for ill.

In many chasidic communities, the eighth day of Pesach in the Diaspora is dedicated to “Mashiach,” including turning the final meal of Pesach into a “Se’udat HaMashiach,” a “Messiah Meal.”

The idea appears to have originated with Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, aka the Ba-al Shem Tov, or by this title’s acronym “the Besht,” may the memory of this sainted teacher continue to be a blessing for a world that desperately needs others like him. (The Besht is the ideological founder of chasidism; the movement itself only formed after his death.)

Ba-al Shem Tov means “he of the good name,” and the Besht certainly deserved that title in all its definitions. He established this custom as a way of tying both ends of Pesach together. Pesach begins with a meal recalling the redemption of the past. He wanted it to end with a meal dedicated to the redemption still to come.

Several chasidic groups later adopted the Se’udat HaMashiach custom, the Breslov sect especially, but Chabad’s version stands out because it includes some seder trappings, including four cups of wine. Chabad’s founder, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, zt”l, added these elements when he instituted the practice for his followers.

I have no doubt that we live in the period known as the atchalta d’geulah, the beginning of redemption in Aramaic, because of something that quotes God as saying:

“[It] shall come to pass that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see My glory….And they shall bring all your brothers [and sisters]…from all nations upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon fleet camels, to My holy mountain Jerusalem.”

That is exactly what happened on November 29, 1947, when “all nations and tongues” gathered to approve United Nations General Assembly Resolution 191, which led to the establishment of the State of Israel five months later, on May 15, 1948.

And that is when the danger of this emerged from our side. What had long been an internal dispute — and quite a grotesquely disturbing one given the 20th-century path Jewish history took from pogroms to gas ovens and no place to run — has become one we see played out in television news programs and newspaper front pages because of the wars in Gaza and Iran. It is a gift given to the Jew-haters of the world by large groups of clearly identifiable ritually observant Jews who attend anti-Israel rallies carrying such disgusting signs as “Authentic Rabbis Always Opposed Zionism and the State of Israel,” and “Judaism Rejects the Zionist State and Condemns its Criminal Siege and Occupation.”

The groups that participate in such events, encouraged as they are by their “authentic rabbis,” are committing multiple sins because of the message they send to the world that “real” Judaism denies us the legitimacy of a Jewish state and that state must be abolished. Only “the messiah” has the right to establish such a state, they say.

I believe in the coming of Mashiach. I pray every day to have the honor to live long enough to see that day come. But I also believe the Torah when it taught us at the parting of the sea that God helps those who first help themselves. For whom — or what — it is that I pray for, I have no clue. In the Tanach, our Bible, the word mashiach simply means “anointed one,” as in “the anointed king,” or “the anointed priest.”

Ironically, given the ongoing war with Iran, modern Persia, the only person in the Tanach explicitly called God’s “anointed king” tasked to be Israel’s “deliverer” was a non-Jewish idol-worshipping king named Koresh. (See Isaiah 45:1.) We know him better as the Emperor Cyrus of Persia, who allowed the Jews to return home from the Babylonian exile.

It is even possible that mashiach represents a promise, not a person.

Perhaps redemption begins when human beings act in ways that make redemption possible.

The prophets speak repeatedly of justice, compassion, and moral responsibility. They do not describe a miraculous figure who descends from heaven and solves humanity’s problems for us. Instead, our prophets challenge us to help shape a world worthy of redemption.

That may be the true message of this emotionally turbulent season in the Jewish year.

The weeks beginning with Nisan remind us that Jewish history has known both unspeakable suffering and astonishing renewal. They remind us that fear and hope often walk side by side.

But they also remind us that the future is not predetermined, and that redemption begins not with miracles but with moral courage.

And perhaps the messianic promise will ultimately be fulfilled only when humanity begins to act as if redemption truly matters.

When that happens, the season that once filled Jews with fear may finally become what Pesach always promised it would be: the beginning of freedom for everyone.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is www.shammai.org.

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