By Zachary Benjamin

As I write this month’s reflections, we sit midway between the celebrations of Purim and Passover, two of the Hebrew calendar’s most profound observances of Jewish perseverance over challenges to our very existence. Our Jewish identities are forged, in large part, by the joys of our Jewish experiences in childhood. For many of us, Purim and Passover represent two of the most significant sources of childhood joy in Judaism.

A visualization of the historic Jewish experience might resemble a sine curve formed by alternating eras of trauma and triumph. The Hebrew calendar is indeed a roller coaster of celebration and solemnity, ingeniously dotted throughout the year to simulate in 13-month cycles our four millennia of turbulent history.

By any measure, we largely define ourselves by the inherited traumas that have rendered us so remarkably adaptable and durable as a people. However, I would argue that just as important as engaging with and learning from those traumas is to lean into the considerable joy of which our Jewish experience avails us. The fact that those joys are often founded in failed attempts to annihilate us laces them with a delicious sense of defiance that crescendos at Purim, then eases into Passover’s more reflective celebratory spirit.

My own Jewish identity, which ultimately guided me toward a calling to the Jewish communal professions and has always served as a philosophical and ideological north star, was born in childhood of the simple joys of Jewish celebrations: the chanting of the Hanukkah blessings in soft candlelight; the raucous defiance of the Purim shpiel; the relief of the Yom Kippur break-fast; and, of course, the distinctive flavors, scents, and spirit of our family’s usually highly abridged Passover seders. As an only child whose parents had migrated far afield from their respective places of birth, Passover—along with Rosh Hashanah—was occasionally one of the handful of opportunities each year for us to be together with one set of grandparents or the other, thus helping establish for me a special ruach about these celebrations that buoyed our Seder table.

Perhaps, for some, the ritual repetition of the Passover seder, year in and year out—at times accompanied by seemingly repetitive conflicts and conversations among those seated at the table—might grow tiresome. For me, the joys of this seminal invitation to revel in our liberty as a people only compounded over time.

Indeed, one of my life’s most poignant and meaningful moments was my first Shabbat at the Kotel in Jerusalem many years ago. I will never forget winding my way through the streets of the Old City at sunset, following the ancient city walls to the protracted bend around which a scene of utter joy personified revealed itself as the Kotel came into view. The Western Wall Plaza was a sea of delirious humanity gathered to welcome the Sabbath. To my own surprise, tears welled in my eyes as I stood without words to describe the scene of thousands upon thousands of Jews of all stripes, backgrounds, and levels of observance, dancing with wild abandon in celebration not only of the privilege of welcoming another Shabbat, but of doing so in our historic and ancestral homeland, from which so many have attempted and failed to remove us.

At press time, I will have just arrived in Israel for a series of leadership workshops for newly-hired JCC CEOs, offered and funded by the JCC Association of North America. While I have been fortunate to travel to Israel many times, this will be my first visit since the October 7 attacks, as well as my first visit in my role with our Federation. Any return to our homeland is a microcosm of the Jewish experience itself, inevitably yielding a variety of revelations, anxieties, and most of all, opportunities for joy and celebration. I look forward to sharing these with our community, both during the experience and upon my return.  

I suspect that every Jewish person’s journey is punctuated by at least a handful of euphoric, transformative, singular moments of joy in Jewish life, peoplehood, and freedom. This Passover, even as we navigate our inevitable differences in ideological, religious, political, and communal perspective, may we all dwell in the common ground of the profound joys with which Judaism has gifted us all.

All of us at the Jewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg wish each and every one of you and your loved ones a joyful, meaningful Passover.