Sderot Israel

Secrets Behind The New Passover Haggadah; A Love Story; Part Two

Ancient Customs, New Awakenings
by Jerry Waxman

When the Yemenites brought their traditions to Israel, they brought the ways of their ancestors extending back thousands of years to the time of the Babylonian exile. They let me help make matzo. They let me help prepare for the seder. They brought me to synagogue, and helped me find my way through the prayer service.

The prayer service was like none I had ever seen before. The men sat around the sides of the room, chanting in unison, some without even looking in a book. Any one of them could have led the service, but one chose to be the chazan for that evening.

The whole seder was such an amazing experience, I no longer felt like a lone soldier. I was part of a vast family - a nation of tribes - with its customs and traditions rooted in the events of over 3300 years ago; our exodus from slavery in Egypt.

An Authentic Pesach Seder

Seder means "order." There is an order in which we do things at the Passover seder. All Jews, no matter what nationality, follow the same order. The Yemenites have basically the same Haggadah as Ashkenazis and Sephardis. Still the seder on the moshav was so dissimilar to our family seders in America, it was hard to think of them both as celebrating the same holiday.

We sat on cushions on the floor. Everyone was relaxed and jovial. Everyone understood the meanings of what was read, what was said, and what was sung. We leaned way way over to drink wine and to eat matzo. The seder meal became a play; a re-enactment of historic events to delight the children and entertain the adults.
[A side story: The story you are reading is true, though the sequence of events has been changed for effect. Meanwhile, in a remote village in Thailand, a little girl was starting out in life. She would one day be the leading inspiration for the Andaman Haggadah. Find out more when you buy the Andaman Haggadah for your Pesach Seder.]
There was food, wine, song, and laughter. And as we sat on the floor, I could imagine that this is how we were at our first seders in the wilderness, recalling the signs and wonders we had witnessed, and the parting of the Red Sea. We were there then. We were there again at our present day seder.

Even though I was more interested in the young women than in Jewish custom at the time, from that day on, I was hooked on the Jewish part of my Jewish heritage. I wish every Jew could experience what I had experienced at that time. The spark of inspiration for an English Haggadah was ignited.

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The Andaman Haggadah in English delivers the passion and meaning of being Jewish. Customers who have read the Andaman Haggadah have commented on how the plain English and simple explanations, along with the exciting images make this their Haggadah of choice for their Passover Seders. Inspired by the story you are reading now, there really is a love story behind the Andaman Haggadah. Get this beautiful English Passover Haggadah now! . Download it today. Print as many as you need. No extra charge, ever. Unannounced bonuses apply.

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Secrets Behind The New Passover Haggadah; A Love Story Continues

• Part One - Lone Soldier Meets Yemenite Clan
• Part Two; Ancient Customs, New Awakenings
• Part Three; Every Jew Deserves This Jewish Feeling
• Part Four; Love and the Andaman Connection (Only available to owners of the Andaman Haggadah)

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Secrets Behind The New Passover Haggadah; A Love Story; Part Three

Every Jew Deserves This Jewish Feeling
by Jerry Waxman

All through growing up in America, and living and working in different places in the U.S., being Jewish meant being different from everyone else, and not in a good way. We were victims in the Holocaust. Our holidays reminded us of tragedies and hardships. The stereotypical Jew is an anxious and disturbed weakling with guilt complexes. In America, I had no Jewish heroes. I didn't even fathom such a thing until I came to Israel.

In America, our seders were wonderful family get-togethers. We read a Haggadah that had English translations of a generic Hebrew Haggadah. The obvious intention of the Haggadah writers was to make sure that the people ate certain things at certain times, and said certain things along the way.

Rote recitation and no feeling; that's how our seders were. Why would we want to remind ourselves that we were Jews? What good does it do for us to remember that we were slaves in Egypt? Depressing stuff, especially when we read this liturgy written in King James English. Especially for anxious, guilt-ridden men and superficial princesses.

Enough, already! Through living in Israel, and through visiting the truly Jewish side of things, I learned that Jews really are heroes. I learned that feelings of guilt and weakness and having nervous breakdowns over petty issues ARE NOT the Jewish way. To be different from the masses of non-Jews who surround us is a good thing - a very exciting uniqueness that we own and can be proud of, not ashamed of.

I gained from the Yemenite seder, and from subsequent seders of various traditions in Israel, a true sense of the freedom that Pesach celebrates. I mean freedom from the feelings of guilt, and shame, and weakness. And freedom from this feeling that we earned our victimhood because we are different.

The Jewish feeling of freedom has no place for boring and meaningless rote recitation. If anything it is a passion for who we are and what we stand for. It is a true love affair with our heritage, and pride for what we have accomplished in every generation since Moses.

While delusions of "spreading the word" escaped me, thankfully, I have wanted very badly to share my experiences with other Jews. Not to tell my story, but to tell our story in a way that other Jews might discover what I discovered; that being Jewish is a heritage to be proud of. That celebrating Pesach can be exciting and deeply meaningful to all of us.

Over the years since that first Yemenite seder, a lot has happened, and I have lived and worked in several places outside Israel. My connection to Israel never stopped, though. With everywhere I went, and everything I did, I knew I would one day return to Israel. Just like when we were slaves in Egypt, we knew that a day would come when we'd finally leave and go to Israel.

There really is a secret love story that goes with the Haggadah I wrote. There is also a not-so-secret love story, which I will reveal here. Hard as it was, I loved my life in Israel. I was living as a Jew in the Jewish homeland. Even though I had no other success, no money, no property, no family around, and nothing to be proud of and nothing to look forward to, I think I had something most people lack. I had an understanding of who I am, and how my life relates to the lives of the people in the Torah. And I had a passion for being a part of Israel - its past, its present and its future.

When I came to live in Sderot two years ago, it was for purely Jewish reasons. I still have no family in Israel. No job, and no income. But i do have a sense of belonging. I came to Sderot at a time when many were leaving because of the rockets. This same sense, I think, drove people to leave Egypt.

The same sense of belonging led Jews to leave Egypt and forge a nation in the wilderness. We, all of us Jews, are connected to that story. We need to reconnect as best we can. I wrote a Haggadah in English with hopes that more and more Americans, Australians, and other English speaking people will have a joyful, meaningful Pesach seder, as I have had in Israel.

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The Andaman Haggadah in English delivers the passion and meaning of being Jewish. Customers who have read the Andaman Haggadah have commented on how the plain English and simple explanations, along with the exciting images make this their Haggadah of choice for their Passover Seders. Inspired by the story you are reading now, there really is a love story behind the Andaman Haggadah. Get this beautiful English Passover Haggadah now! . Download it today. Print as many as you need. No extra charge, ever. Unannounced bonuses apply.

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Secrets Behind The New Passover Haggadah; A Love Story Continues

• Part One - Lone Soldier Meets Yemenite Clan
• Part Two; Ancient Customs, New Awakenings
• Part Three; Every Jew Deserves This Jewish Feeling
• Part Four; Love and the Andaman Connection (Only available to owners of the Andaman Haggadah)

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Education in Sderot

The Train is Flying Off the Cliff

by Jerry Waxman

After nearly two years of looking for a job, sending resumes, going to inteviews and doing demonstration lessons, I have finally gotten to work for money. As a substitute teacher. Teaching English. My specialty.

I am not elated.

In my first class, a boy who was late for tefilla sits in the front desk, tefillin on his head and arm, wrapped in a talit, and uttering the final passages of Shachrit. When he is finished some ten minutes later, he immediately goes outside the classroom, and meanders back in once or twice during the rest of the hour. Later I learn that this is the boy's daily modus operandus.

At least he goes outside the class. Others come into the class shouting, and the noise level never subsides for more than a few seconds. They sit in desks toward the back and play cards or they play with their cell phones. They bring sandwiches and drinks and toys, and are completely oblivious to the fact that a teacher is in the class with them. Nor would it help much if they did notice. They show more respect for cartoon mice than they do for teachers, no less a substitute teacher.

Sderot's schools are probably not much different from others. When I visited a high school in Jerusalem, I watched an English teacher use the majority of her time trying to discipline students. It was a very nice high school with a modern building and materials for teaching and learning, which is much different from what we find in Sderot. Yet the teachers and students in the Jerusalem school made no better use of time than their counterparts in Sderot.

The security guard at the school told me, "In Israel, there is no education."

He is not the first person to say this. I guess it took a couple days of entering littered classrooms, being shouted at by students, breaking up fights - or trying to, and watching all my preparations getting trashed before I fully understood what the security guard meant.

The teaching methods fit the curriculum. And the curriculum fits the attitude of whoever devised this system. In teaching English, for example, there is no emphasis on acquiring the language. The students are trained from early on that the goal is to pass a national test, not learn anything useful, Their textbooks are designed with this objective in mind. Hence teachers are discouraged from actual teaching, and follow the textbooks when they can, when they are not having to deal with discipline.

The lack of self-respect, not to mention lack of respect for other people, is symptomatic of a deeper problem in Israel. When so many people and national leaders in Israel are willing to relinquish land to the Palestinian leaders under the pretense of peace, it is no wonder that the youth see no future here. Why shouldn't they shout at teachers, and completely disregard all authority? When Israel's leaders don't value the students' futures, why should the students respect them?

The teachers also seem resigned to the notion that "There is nothing we can do about it." Perhaps it is safer for teachers who want to keep their jobs to believe this. But in the long-run, it is harming Israel. The problems in the schools have been going on for decades. These same youth who trash handouts and bring food to class today are going to be leaders in the near future. I used to believe it was the teachers' responsibility to guide the youth toward productive careers. In fact I still believe that. There is a system in place which interferes drastically with that responsibility.

The great shame is that there is so much potential going to waste. The schools are full of unguided students, using time only to shout and yell, and interrupt, and play childish games. This they do instead of channeling their energies toward creative outlets. The obstruction to education is now like a machine perpetuating itself forward It is like the students and the city are all on a train, flying over a cliff, and the teachers are greasing the wheels. I