Preaching Goes Viral

Celebrating Passover in the Shadow of Coronavirus

Analogies to Mythic Narratives

There’s an incredible story of three friends who held a Seder in the Muhldorf concentration camp in Germany in 1945. Moshe Goldstein, Yaakov Friedman and Yekusiel Halberstam, the Klausenberger Rebbe, watched their friends and relatives being murdered every day. Towards the end of the war, the Allied forces bombed the train lines near the camps, and the Germans sent Moshe to clear up the tracks. Moshe found a freight car that was turned over on its side, filled with sacks of wheat. He knew if he lugged a sack back into the camp, he would be shot on the spot. He rummaged through the freight cars and found a pair of pants, which he put over his own pants, and he poured as much wheat as he could in the space between the two pairs of pants. He and his friends found an old mill, ground the wheat, and sifted it. They gathered sticks and made a fire under a metal can, which they used to bake their matzahs. The group made a Seder, and they all had a small piece of matzah. Moshe says he will always remember that Seder and how they sang with utter hope, “Next year in Jerusalem!”

2022-12-13

Rochel Holzkenner

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