A different night?

Editorial

One of the traditional questions asked at the Passover seder - Why is this night different from all other nights? - brings to mind an even more poignant inquiry this year: When will this night be different from all other nights?

As NATO bombers this week pursued Serbian forces, and refugees from the beleaguered region fled across the border in search of safety, Jews around the world have been recalling the exodus from Egypt and celebrating the holiday of freedom.

"On all other nights we eat leavened and unleavened bread," begins one of the responses to the first of the seder's four questions. In Kosovo, some residents who remain may have no bread at all to eat, while in Budapest, where many Jewish refugees have gathered, the Passover matzo has the bitter taste of fear and affliction.

"On all other nights, we eat all kinds of herbs, on this night bitter herbs," continues the seder liturgy. This year, the ethnic Kosovars are experiencing the bitterness of repression.

To ask why NATO forces should intervene in the Balkans is to ask the essential biblical question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Genesis 4:9).

To explain why the United States must combat Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing is to affirm the lesson of the Holocaust: Never again.

To say that the latest outbreak is yet another manifestation of endemic ethnic hatreds and that both sides have blood on their hands, to bridle at comparisons to the Shoah - not nearly the magnitude, not as systematic - is to excuse or dismiss the fundamental obligation to thwart the human propensity for evil, no matter the degree.

Elie Wiesel is right. We must come to the defense of defenseless victims. And, yes, better late than never.

And so, the remaining Jews in Yugoslavia huddled around their seder tables in fear this week, while those who have escaped gathered as strangers with their Hungarian hosts. They hope for peace and they pray, as do we, that next year, this night will be different.

Home