Rabbi Gary A. Glickstein

I am sitting in Jerusalem and thinking about the seder still two weeks away.

Specifically, I am imagining the fifth cup of wine at the seder: the cup of Elijah.

This year, God willing and the airlines cooperating, we will have our very own Elijah at the seder.

Our grandson, now a bit over six months old, will be sitting at our table.

The reason we name the cup after the prophet Elijah is because we consider this cup different from the other four we bless and drink during the evening of Passover. The first four refer to God’s redeeming the Jewish people from Egypt. These cups represent miracles our people experienced which had little or nothing to do with their actions.

The cup of Elijah is different. It is the cup of redemption yet to be achieved. This cup is in our hands. This redemption depends upon what we do in partnership with God. And so we do not drink from it at the seder, yet.

I came to Jerusalem to visit Laila Haas, Cantor Steven and Nina Haas’ daughter and a first year rabbinical student. I wanted to see first-hand how she was doing, support her hard work and meet this class of budding Rabbis, Cantors and Educators at my Alma Mater, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Today, on my last morning of this visit, Laila’s Hebrew class had breakfast together in a local restaurant. For over an hour, the students spoke only Hebrew, ordered meals in Hebrew, told stories in Hebrew and learned Hebrew in Hebrew. I marveled at how far they had come in less than a year. I remembered my struggles to learn to speak and read and write in Hebrew during and after my Rabbinic training.

This class is one of the miracles the Jewish people have accomplished during our work to bring about the final redemption. As it is written in the Torah, “And I will bring you to the land which I have lifted up my hand to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; to give it to you as a heritage - morasha.” A morasha, a heritage, is different from an inheritance. We receive an inheritance without our active involvement. In that sense, the first four cups were our inheritance and so we merit to drink from them. But a heritage must be earned. The Torah is our morasha and we only earn her through hard work and study. Without that, we lose our Torah, Israel, our morasha. We have earned the land of Israel before in our long history, only to lose her. We keep her only by working to strengthen and defend her. We hold on to this precious heritage only by vigilance and commitment.

Learning Hebrew, the language of our ancestors, reborn in the last century, is one way to earn Israel.

I recommend the book COMING TOGETHER, COMING APART by Daniel Gordis. It is a touching and powerful description of life in Israel for a new immigrant family from the United States during the terrible years of the second Intifada. He describes how American Jewish tourists go to an army base and fire M-16 rifles. He reacts by writing, “Seriously...Go to the bookstore. And there, not on the army base, you’ll find the real miracle that this place is. A store full of books in a language restored and brought back to life, the nation that reads that language. A store with hundreds upon hundreds of new titles, written exclusively for a country with a population less than that of the Los Angeles metropolitan area....A tiny store by B&N standards, but an enormous miracle nonetheless”—-one miracle among thousands here in Israel (and, yes, the IDF is another miracle, at least).

Soon we will celebrate 40 years of the Reunification of Jerusalem and 59 years of the existence and dramatic growth of the State of Israel. As it says in the Haggada, “How many wonderful goodnesses the Eternal has shown us.”

Perhaps the day will come when we don’t have to wait for Elijah the Prophet to come and drink from the fifth cup. Perhaps we will earn the right for our own children and grandchildren, Sarahs and Elijahs and all others, to drink from that cup at our seders because it is our morasha, and we earned it.

Not yet. We are not yet there. But, God help us, we are on the way.

Let us never forget, lest we lose all we have gained and more.

Let us remain vigilant and strong, lest we let our guard down and return to another Egypt.

Let us continue to produce the miracles that light the darkness of our broken world and so eventually merit the fifth cup, our morasha.

P.S. Laila is doing wonderfully. She is a constant advertisement and spokeswoman for our congregation’s approach to Jewish living.