Steve Cohen Sermon

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Sermon of Rabbi Steve Cohen from Friday, March 27, 2020 with minor adaptations to fit our family seder tonight

Originally written for Congregation B’nai B’rith, Santa Barbara CA

Passover is here. Tonight, Jews all over the world will tell our ancient story of one endless night over three thousand years ago, during which the Angel of Death moved through the land, and we sheltered in place. Huddled in our homes, with a mark of blood smeared on our doorposts, praying for protection, and for our lives, and the lives of our parents and our children.
This year the old Passover story, out of our distant past, is suddenly speaking directly to us. Not only to us, the Jewish people, but to all of us, the entire Human Family.

We all understand that right now we are living through the great story of our time. After this is over, the world will not be the same. Like the Jews huddled in their homes on the terrible night of the 10th plague, we have no idea how long it will last, or how it will end. But we do know that there will be a time, years from now, when people will tell the story of the Pandemic of 2020. Tonight I want to send a message to the future, to the storytellers of the future...a message from all of us here in the middle of the story.

First of all, when you tell this story years from now, make sure to mention the parents of little children, especially your own Mommies and Daddies, Aunts Dara and Rivka, and Uncles Eric, Scott, and Ernie, all over the globe. Parents grappling with their own fears and insecurities. Parents digging deep within themselves to find honest words of courage and comfort to say to their kids, as they put them to bed at night.

Also, you story tellers of the future, Benjamin, Ilana, Lexie, Charlotte, Matilda, and Ian, let your story include our personal matriarchs and patriarchs, Gram/Great Bubbie, your Uncle Harry/Papa, Aunt Deb/Grandmama, Bubbie/Aunt Sharon, Uncle Howard and Aunt Lucia, and Dick and Angela, Let it also include the story of many of the elders we do not know who are stuck alone in their rooms in retirement homes or nursing homes, wondering when they will see their friends or their children again. Let future generations know that the Angel of Death went out across the entire globe during February, and March and April and May in the year 2020, and descended upon our elders when they were all alone.

When you tell that story, please remember the home health aides, and the cleaning workers, and the food delivery men and women who provide a lifeline for our seniors to the outside world. And do not forget to mention the high school students and college students, our beautiful young people, who stood up and revealed themselves to us as full adults during this pandemic. How they rallied and organized themselves to bring food and supplies, to those forced to remain inside.

If you are telling the story of this pandemic years from now, do not leave out the homeless men and women, who even before the coronavirus were already living outside. Hungry and cold. And now they have lost the tiny shred of social safety net that was keeping them alive. Tell that part of the story in a quiet voice, because of the shame we feel every time we walk past a fellow human being, left out in the cold.

Perhaps one Passover night, thirty years from now, or fifty years from now, or one hundred years from now, you will raise the matzah at the start of the seder and proclaim “This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt....let all who are hungry come and eat.” When you recite those words, you might add to those seated at your table:

“In fact it happened during the Pandemic of 2020, that as the world economy shut down, millions of good, steady jobs disappeared overnight, all over the globe, and hardworking responsible men and women found themselves without money to feed their families. It can happen to anyone. It did happen that year.”

Finally, when you tell the story of this Pandemic....whoever you are, and in whatever year in the distant future you are living....please make sure to tell the praises of our health care workers. In fact, tell that part of the story in song. With music! Because words alone cannot capture the quality of heroism that we are seeing manifested every day in the Emergency rooms, the waiting rooms and the Intensive Care Units. The nurses, doctors, technicians, prehospital first responders...the police and the firefighters and the emergency medical technicians. When you come to tell the story of our world turned upside down, sing songs about these medical women and men.

That’s my message to the story-tellers of the future, who will one day seek to convey some of the terror and some of the hidden holiness of the time we are living through right now. I hope that it reaches you...out there in the unknown future.

Passover is coming and with it a simple but powerful truth. The night will end. The sun will rise. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.