Attitute Of Gratitude, The Virtue Of Light Is In Contrast To The Dark

Charles Plumb was a US Naval Academy graduate, who flew jets in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, he was shot down by a surface-to-air missile. He ejected and parachuted into the jungle. The Viet Cong captured him and held him prisoner for six years in North Vietnam. After the Vietnam war concluded, Charles Plumb lectured on lessons learned from that experience.

One day, when he and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man came over and said, “You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!”

“How in the world did you know that?” asked Plumb the former pilot.

“Well, because I packed your parachute!” he said. Plumb gasped in surprise. The man pumped his hand and said, “I guess it worked!”

Plumb assured him it did. “If your chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here today.”

That night, Plumb, the pilot, couldn’t sleep because he kept thinking about the stranger. He wondered how many times he might have seen him, and not spoken, because, he was a fighter pilot, and the man who packed his chute, was, “just a sailor.” Plumb thought of the many hours that the sailor had spent on a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds, and folding the silks of each parachute, holding in his hands,  each time,  the fate of someone he didn’t know.

And so now, when Plumb lectures, he always asks his audience, “Who’s packing your parachute?”

Upon entering a store, one is likely to find its first dollar hanging on the front wall. The reason for this is to remind the proprietor of his early struggles. The owner does not wish to forget his difficult and humble beginnings; even should he later become a millionaire.

In his memoirs, Rabbi Israel Lau, one of the youngest survivors of Buchenwald, describes how he arrived in the Holy Land after WWII bereft of father and mother with all his worldly possessions stuffed into one tiny suitcase.

Rabbi Lau has come a very long way since those painful and uncertain times. He studied in Yeshiva, got married, raised a family and even became Israel’s Chief Rabbi, but he could never forget the tiny suitcase with which he arrived on Israel’s shore. It serves for him as a reminder of G-d’s loving kindness and the many miracles by which his life has been blessed.

Rabbi Lau was not the first to preserve a piece of his past in order to keep the future in perspective. This is a rather ancient phenomenon which dates far back in Jewish history, perhaps even to Biblical times.

Commenting on the verse, “And David’s name went forth in all the lands,” the Midrash notes: “His coins spread through the world. What was inscribed on his coins,” probes the Midrash. “On one side,” says the Midrash, was “His staff and sack, on the other side, his tower.”

Unlike other kings of ancient times – wont to imprint their own image on the currency of their place of reign – for his currency, King David chose to immortalize a staff and sack on one side and his royal tower on the other.

Having risen from a simple shepherd all the way to king, David wanted to always be reminded, even as he sat in the royal tower, of the days when he carried a staff and a sack as a simple shepherd.

The Midrash continues to note a similar phenomenon regarding the hero of the Purim story; Mordechai, who apparently had coins baring his own insignia. His coins, according to the Midrash, spread throughout the entire world. Mordechai’s currency, maintains the Midrash, bore the insignia of sackcloth and ashes on one side and a crown of gold on the other.

The reason given for the particular insignia was Mordechai’s wish for his generation to be reminded of the sackcloth and ashes that he had been wearing before he had become the king’s right-hand man. He did not want them to forget what has led to his dawning of sackcloth – the thread over the pit of extinction by which the entire Jewish nation had been hanging.

Like King David, he wanted to perpetually remember those dreadful days lest they take the good days for granted. He wanted to remind everyone that “This is where we were, and this is where it happened” – that things could have turned out differently, G-d forbid and that they should forever be grateful for G-d’s kindness.

In the above light we could better understand the rituals of the Pesach Seder; why we eat Matzah and Marror. The Haggadah tells us that we eat Matzah “because our ancestors’ dough didn’t have time to rise . . . since they had been banished from Egypt.” In other words, the Matzah reminds us of the good news – the “Exodus” from Egypt.

But at the same Seder we are also required to eat Marror. The reason for this, states the Haggadah, is to remind us that the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors. Herein we find the same pattern of contrast.  We celebrate our freedom but at the same time remember the bitterness of the past – while celebrating our precious gift of freedom, we don’t forget the bitter taste of exile.

Now that explains why we eat Matzah and Marror, however, as we know, the great Sage Hillel insisted that, in addition to the obligation of eating Matzah and Marror separate, one needs to also eat the Matzah and Marror together. But why the sandwich?

What Hillel is saying is that the eating of Matzah and Marror must serve the same purpose as the two-sided coins of King David and Mordechai. Just as they didn’t use two separate coins to make their point but rather placed the opposing images on either side of one coin, so too, according to Hillel, it is with the Matzah and Marror.

Hillel believed that the joy of exodus and the bitterness of exile must be part of the same sandwich. Only then can we truly appreciate and thank G-d for our freedom and the miracle of the Exodus from Egypt. There is a relevant lesson in all this for us in our unique day and age.

With the possible exception of the era of King Solomon, the Jewish nation has never had it this good in its entire history. No generation has lived in such peace, freedom, affluence and tranquility as does ours. Yet we so often forget how good we have it.

Never in our history as a people, have we been allowed to practice Judaism freely just about anywhere in the world. Never have we enjoyed such friendliness and acceptance from our neighbors as we do nowadays in the United States and other Western countries.

For this reason alone we ought to offer a continuous song of gratitude to G-d for all the good He continues to give this generation. But it’s hard to appreciate just how good we have it, when we never experienced any lack.

As we proceed with Passover, let us remember from where we have come. Let those memories spur us to even greater appreciation of what we have today. Was there ever a better time to be alive than today? Was there ever a worse time in history to be alive then one generation ago?

Imagine! A measly 60 years separates us from the worse time of history and the best time ever. Through the power of contrast, let us appreciate and value all the blessings that G-d has given us in placing us in this unique generation of history.

And yet there is more to the sandwich. There are other, equally compelling, reasons for the need to remember the past while we celebrate the present. This is emphasized in the Yizkor ceremony, which is observed upon the conclusion of the holiday.

In the spirit of Hillel’s sandwich, during this sacred time of memory our thoughts turn from the joy of family to thoughts of those who are not physically present. We turn to their memory; we recall how they nourished us. We remember how they influenced our lives and helped us become the persons we are today. We also remember others who have played a crucial part in shaping our lives, even if we do not know them or realize it. Indeed, we have all benefited from some form of a parachute.

Many who packed our parachutes are not from this generation. Still these people, whom we do not personally know, are responsible for who we are. In fact, as Jews, we have benefited from every single generation of Jews that preceded us. To them we owe the ultimate recognition and debt of gratitude for guarding and preserving our precious heritage, often at the ultimate price, so that we may be its beneficiaries.

So as we recite Yizkor, it is fitting for us to memorialize those who have packed our parachutes, even though we may not know their names, or their stations in life, because they are the ones to whom we owe everything in our lives.

The Midrash tells us that when Moshiach comes, all the sacrifices of the Temple will no longer be offered—except for the Thanksgiving Sacrifice, which will never cease.

May we take all the pertinent lessons of this rich Yom Tov, not the least the fundamental importance of the Hillel sandwich, and apply it to our lives, hastening thereby the coming of the righteous Moshiach BBA.