Imagine eating pizza on Pesach? No one with any connection to Judaism would even dream of this or missing the seder. But why? What would make Jews flee from bread on Pesach and the answer is not because it causes cancer.
The answer is because God told us to do it. Period. In other words we are doing something that is spiritual even though someone may say they are doing it for ethnic traditional reasons. However the basis is still religious. Yet how many actually realize that lying is also wrong because of religious and social teaching.
The whole purpose of the seder is to leave and come to Israel. Period. Unfortunately for various reasons Rabbis will not teach that part. There is a midrash that 80 percent of the Jews died in Egypt because they did not want to come to Israel. Not because they stole or killed. Lest one think that history doesn't repeat itself we have seen that happen again and again.
I had a friend in Miami who told me he did not want to come to Israel because he would miss his parents and he felt he could learn Torah better if he wouldn't be homesick. So what did he do? He went to learn in a Yeshiva in Milwaukee. This Pesach think are you doing the same sort of hypocrisy? When you are 18 or 19 you are beginning to build your life. You don't have a family or career to tie you down. Yes, there are people who will libel Israel and say that it is hard to find work. But that is all that they are doing, libeling.
I live here in Israel and it is much better than being in America where I lived previously. Does any one remember what happened to the spies that Moshe sent to Israel? There was a Rabbi called Rav Kook and to paraphrase what he said was that any Jew wanting to live in exile is like throwing an egg up and seeing it violate the law of gravity. Eventually it will fall.
Same with the Jewish people. The Jews of South Africa were a lot like American Jews. They had a good life and didn't want to come to Israel. But then the situation changed and they are fleeing here now. Before the same thing happens in America, come here. How many people know that 10 years ago there was a pogrom in Brooklyn, New York for 3 days? A pogrom, not by one anti-Semitic crazy, but with the full approval of the mayor of the largest Jewish city in America.
Or perhaps you don't realize that the Poles and Germans that made your grandparents into useful soap are your neighbors? When do you want to make aliya? Now when you are young and flexible or when you are 35 married with 3 kids and a career? Is this the year to actually do Next year in Israel? I have many web sites to help.
Mike Steinbach
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