Author: admin

Passover Even though Passover has come and gone, this blog contribution from Maayan Shapurkar,[27 years, Programme Manager for Young Adult Engagement (in the local Jewish community), is a   poignant eyewitness account from Mumbai recounting a modern-day response to crisis. After generations of enslaving the Israelite people, ten plagues and the death of the Egyptian firstborn, Pharaoh finally let the Israelites leave. They prepared in haste and left with their bread unleavened. We remember their journey from slavery to freedom every Pesach and in our prayers throughout the yea This year, as the Coronavirus hijacked our world and shook us out of our routines, the global pandemic offered us an opportunity to take our remembering up a whole new level, to feel the uncertainty, chaos, fear, and anxiety our ancestors felt about where the future would lead. In Man's Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl wrote, "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” This year we chose resilience, pushing ourselves to get creative and continue the tradition of a communal seder, thanks to videoconferencing technology. There has never been anything that has stopped the Jews. While certain local community organizations led online seders I and my family like  each year prayed together at home. This year we did not have all our ritual foods, so we used substitutes like garlic for maror and boiled potatoes for karpas. Here in India we…