Plenty more can be said on the dating and authorship of the various segments of the Haggada, and on the mixing of Hebrew and Aramaic and seeming repetition of this specific paragraph. Refer to “Iyun Tefillah” as well.
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It was a daunting assignment: speaking to 120 eighth grade girls about the Holocaust in the last hour of the last day of their school year. Compounding my challenge, it was gloriously sunny outside. The girls would be anxious to take leave for their summer vacation.
In my favor, I was going to tell them a remarkable story: that of my mother-in-law, Rachel Blum, may her soul rest in peace – a story I have told to spell-bound audiences and have recently published in book form under the title Nothing Bad Ever Happens.
I told these teenage girls that my mother-in-law was roughly their age during the war years, beginning in June 1941 when the Nazis invaded her town, until July 1944 when the Russians liberated Lublin where she had been hiding with a non-Jewish family.
Then I dove into the story, which is truly incredible and gripping – including a Hollywood-worthy climax as Rachel rides in the caboose of a speeding train transporting a thousand SS soldiers to Germany. Fearful an SS officer is about to discover she is Jewish, she convinces the conductor – Ivan Roluk, husband of the non-Jewish couple who took her in – to overturn the train by speeding up around a sharp bend and blowing the horn just beforehand to allow her and his family to jump. (It worked, the family survived and many Nazis were killed; 15-year-old Rachel was responsible for the death of more SS Nazis in one shot than the combined efforts of all the legendary fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising!)
Despite the dramatic nature of that story, I will save the details for the book and instead share another story, one which is in some ways even more incredible.
Rachel’s childhood town, Ludmir, was home to about 22,000 Jews before the war. On Rosh Hashanah 1942, the Nazis, with the help of local collaborators, began marching columns of bedraggled Jews to a spot outside town and machine-gunned them to death into open pits. Between 15,000 and 18,000 Jews lost their lives that way. And Ludmir was just one of countless Jewish towns in Eastern Europe; all told, some million-and-a-half Jews suffered a similar fate under Nazi domination (even before the gas chambers started operating).
20) The view of Rav Elazar Ben Tzadok (Pesachim 114a) is that charoses constitutes a mitzvah. The Gemara presents two explanations of Rav Elazar ben Tzadok’s opinion. One explanation is that the thick texture and cloudy color of the Charoses serve to recall the mortar that the Jewish slaves used for making bricks in Egypt. A second explanation is that the Charoses serves to remind us of the “Tapuchim” in Egypt. Rashi and Rashbam explain that the Jewish women in Egypt would painlessly and quietly give birth beneath the apple trees so that the Egyptians would not discover that a Jewish male was born. We follow the view of Rav Elazar Ben Tzadok.
21) The Rishonim (Tosafos, Tur etc.) write that Charoses is made from fruits mentioned in Tanach symbolizing the Jewish people (apples, figs, dates, walnuts, almonds and pomegranates, with some adding grapes and pears). The Ari z”l would eat Charoses comprised of grapes, figs, dates, nuts, apples, pomegranates and pears. The Ari z”l did mention that the common custom amongst Ashkenazim was to make Charoses comprised of nuts, apples and pears.(See Kol Bo and Kaf Hachaim 473:99)
22) As noted above, we explained that one of the reasons that we eat charoses is that the Charoses serves to remind us of the “Tapuchim” in Egypt. Rashi and Rashbam explain that the Jewish women in Egypt would painlessly and quietly give birth beneath the apple trees so that the Egyptians would not discover that a Jewish male was born.
23) It should be noted that Tosafos (Taanis 29b) explains that the Biblical word “Tapuach” refers to a citrus fruit, like an esrog or an orange. This view of Tosafos was also cited by Harav Yosef Dov Soloveichick zt”l. (Nefesh Harav 209) It is for this reason that Rav Hershel Schachter shlit”a (in a shiur) maintains that if one wants to be accurate, he should use oranges (or other citrus fruits) for the charoses. Harav Avraham Blumenkrantz zt”l adds that in many Sefardic homes apples are not used at all for the Charoses. And that those who do use apples for the Charoses should also include some citrus fruit or juice. However, this does not seem to be the common custom.
By the way, ignoramuses treat Charoses as a late custom (while elevating baseless habits as halacha), but it is brought in the Gemara.
That’s why we only accept a Ger Toshav when we have Yovel since Yovel depends on all Jews dwelling in the land. Otherwise, we cannot afford it! According to the Ra’vad, we can still decide whether or not to accept them based on national economic ability. (Without inflation.)
I quote Chazon Ish Shevi’is 24:2-3, see inside:
… אפשר שכל העניים שבאומות יעלו לארץ ויקבלו עליהן גירות התושב ונתחייב להחיותן וכדאמר ב”מ ע”א א’ ולפיכך בזמן שהיובל נוהג וכל ישראל על אדמתן והן שולטין בעולם אפשר להם לעמוד בדבר אבל בזמן שאין כל יושביה עליה ואין שליטת ישראל שלמה אי אפשר להם לקבל גרים תושבים ולפרנסם…
Ponder that…
(Unconstrained cosmopolitans may also wish to note the Torah’s rules for immigration and the Sifrei [brought by Chazon Ish Y. D. 65:5] not to let Gerei Toshav live in border cities.)
And since there is no source for setting up a State, we also see here that the Chazon Ish understands (by fixing the Ra’avad’s text [which Frankel’s manuscripts don’t support, incidentally]) that a plurality of Jews in one place means they naturally control that place (unless they labor under some self-sabotaging anti-Zionist delusion), even without formal, political institutions (as the “Practical Zionism” slogan went, “במקום שבו עוברת המחרשה, שם יהיה הגבול”).
This is against the anti-Zionist settlement\statehood False Dichotomy meant to counter the history and halachos of autonomous Jewish settlement in spite of the “Three Oaths”.
NB: Gary North, in his mostly-Austrian economic commentary on much of the Bible (and the fake sequel), understands, to his credit, just by reading the Pentateuch, that under the laws of “ancient Israel”, non-Jewish strangers at the gate are treated far better than Jews, and meted equal justice. Not accurate, but close.
Apologies for not going into detail; just a humble popularizer.
