The Empty Seat at the Table

The Empty Seat at the Table: A Message for Passover
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
April 6, 2012


The Passover Haggadah has a timely rejoinder for us all: In each generation, each of us must see him- or herself as though he or she had just been redeemed from Egyptian slavery. Even as we sit in luxury, reclining upon pillows in the old Roman style, served one sumptuous dish after another, our cup of wine literally never empty, we must also remember the days in which we had nothing—or very little—to eat or drink, and little obvious reason to thank and praise God.

For some of us, born in this great country after the deprivations of the Great Depression and after the terrible sadness of World War Two, we can’t even begin to imagine such a time.

But imagine we must.

The forebears of many of us today came to America fleeing hunger or persecution. As they lifted their eyes and saw the Statue of Liberty, they knew they had come to a new world, a place where a whole new world of freedom and opportunity awaited them. Many of them began their new lives here in poverty and squalor; but soon, within a few years, certainly within a couple of decades, their life here began to bear new fruit.

For those who came later, fleeing the terrors of the Holocaust, America represented nothing less than a new lease on life.

Millions found new opportunities to rebuild their lives both in America and in Israel following the establishment of the State of Israel. Nearly 750,000 refugees from Arab countries arrived, along with their brethren who survived the Holocaust and understood that only in Israel would they be able to express themselves fully as Jews, able to protect themselves from any attacker.

Millions more fled the USSR in the 1970’s and 80’s. And yet more arrived under cover of darkness from Ethiopia as part of Operation Solomon.

Tonight, all these newly-freed people can raise their voices and sing with true understanding about the narrow straits they had to pass through in order to become free.


But as we look around us, at the larger world we live in, we realize how many more are yet entangled in webs of violence, oppression and slavery: Minority Christians and Muslims throughout the Middle East who are driven from their homes, their houses of worship bombed and burned; women in Pakistan and Afghanistan who suffer abuse and are often sold as slaves; children in Uganda and Sudan who suffer abuse, forced to fight in wars they didn’t start, kill others or be killed themselves, who are abused and all too often find themselves victims of human trafficking.


And even among us, in our own cities and towns, we still find religious intolerance, bigotry, homophobia, fear and ignorance.

The list goes on and on.

A new tradition has evolved in the homes of many Jews lucky enough to celebrate the Passover in luxury and gratitude: Leaving an empty seat around the table, symbolic of the many who still languish in misery and slavery throughout the world. Every time we look at that seat, we remember that once, we too had no place to sit around a table laden with all manner of food and drink. Remembering this, we can begin to understand what freedom really means. It is NOT dayenu—it is not enough that we ourselves are free tonight. For as long as some of us are not free, none of us is totally free either.

It is at such moments that we recall a passage from our prayer book, Mishkan Tefilah:

Standing on the parted shores of history
We still believe what we were taught
Before ever we stood at Sinai’s foot;
That wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt
That there is a better place, a promised land;
That the winding way to that promise
Passes through the wilderness.
That there is no way to get from here to there
Except by joining hands, marching
Together.


Tonight, as our voices join together in song and praise, as many of us recount not only the origins of Israel’s history but also their own, more personal story of redemption, let us join hands and make a solemn promise: to remember those whose stories tonight are not told, those whose voices have been stilled by violence and pain, but whose prayer tonight joins our own—L’shana ha-ba-ah bi-Yrushalayim. Next year in Jerusalem. Let us make a pledge to work even harder to bring freedom to those—near and far—who are still oppressed. Next year, may all find a place to sit around a table and eat, drink and sing to their heart’s delight. Next year, may all be free.


© 2012 by Boaz D. Heilman