The Golden Flowers of the Jewish Ghetto

My oldest son joined the IDF today. Hair shorn; army green.

We made a last-minute plan to travel abroad for 3 days as a send-off before the army. Not something either of us is accustomed to, the idea was to create a special adventure, and unwittingly, it became a reminder that what he is doing, along with so many before him, is so demonstrative of the courageous resolve of Am Yisrael.

We chose a location with a lot of kosher food options, a short travel time to and from Israel with reportedly “minimal antisemitism,” and accessibility to many sites by foot. Have you guessed? We went to Rome. Roma.

One of the popular novel foods of the Jewish ghetto, particularly in the spring and served in almost every kosher restaurant that we saw, is the fried artichoke. This dish was created in Rome’s Jewish ghetto, a walled-in area of land not far from the Tiber River, where Jews were forced to live from the 1500s until 1870. We lived in crowded conditions, in extreme poverty with limited access to food. One of the foods we could obtain was artichokes, often discarded at the end of the day in less-than-perfect condition. To salvage the vegetables and make them more appealing, the custom began to fry them in the ghetto’s communal pot of frying oil. Tourists of today, Jews and non-Jews alike, come to try this “traditional” food. The golden flowers of the ghetto.

It reflected our impoverished state. It is a sign of our resilience and innovation.

I didn’t anticipate the mixed emotions that would be stirred inside of me. I was unexpectedly introduced to a modern-day matza, the symbol of our servitude and the marker of our freedom.

The glistening flowers are served with pride as a famous “traditional” Jewish dish… But they would never have come to exist if we had had permission to live and work where we pleased.

While it seems like a hollow tourist attraction, it is also a reminder of what we have been through and how we’ve come out stronger, flourishing despite our struggles. Similarly, we learnt that the Jews of Rome steadfastly avoided nearing the Arch of Titus up until the establishment of the State of Israel, when the local Jews walked through it with heads held high. And quite strikingly, its image with our menorah held aloft as Roman booty, has somewhat jarringly become a sort of pop art in the Jewish ghetto.

I will think of these images this year; of fried artichokes and new-age art, as we’ll raise a cup of wine during Maggid and say the lines:

וְהִיא שֶׁעָמְדָה לַאֲבוֹתֵינוּ וְלָנוּ

שֶׁלֹּא אֶחָד בִּלְבָד עָמַד עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּ

אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר עוֹמְדִים עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּ

וְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַצִּילֵנוּ מִיָּדָם

“And that which stood for our forefathers and for us keeps us. For not only one arose and tried to destroy us, rather in every generation they stand up and try to destroy us, and Hashem saves us from their hands.”

This is most widely understood as commemorating the brit bein habetarim, Covenant of the Parts, referenced in the previous paragraph in the Haggadah, the promise made between God and Avraham (Bereishit 15:13-14) that we will be enslaved and come out with great wealth. The phrase וְאַחֲרֵי כֵן יֵצְאוּ בִּרְכֻשׁ גָּדוֹל  can be understood as after our servitude we came out with great monetary wealth. However, it is a spiritual wealth that is meant by the word “gadol,” or great (HaKtav V’HaKabalah Bereishit 15:14), similar to Moshe being described as “a very great man in the land of Egypt (Shemot 11:3).

This promise is not limited to the Exodus from Egypt; rather it is a model which is repeated over the generations. As a people, we know how to rise from the ashes with unparalleled spiritual fortitude. Just as our enemies stand and have stood (עָמַד/עוֹמְדִים עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּּ) to destroy us, so too this truth stands for us (וְהִיא שֶׁעָמְדָה לַאֲבוֹתֵינוּ וְלָנוּ) – that we will suffer, yes, and we will come out stronger than before with greater spiritual wealth, more innovation, and a more tenacious grasp on life.

A well-known essay by Mark Twain “Concerning the Jews,” written in 1899 states:

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race…

He has made a marvelous fight in the world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”

The last line of the “V’hi She’Amdah” prayer gives us the answer: What is the secret to our immortality?  וְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַצִּילֵנוּ מִיָּדָם  and The Holy One, Blessed Be He, saves us from their hands. Our enemies may try to destroy us physically, but our national spirit is resilient, rooted in Hashem, who fuels our “alert and aggressive minds,” and strengthens our conviction to defy the odds. We are a people like no other and despite so many setbacks, with our hands tied behind our backs, Am Yisrael is still here making our “marvelous fight in the world.”

The symbol of our fight in this world is undoubtedly the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF was born from the need to defend Medinat Yisrael, but it has become a symbol that far surpasses that; it is the strength and pride of the entire nation of Israel; their unity and commitment is a shining powerful example to us all. Every chayal is a beloved hero, defending our country, our people, and our spirit.

As we are about to enter Pesach, we are acutely aware of those who stand up to try and decimate us. Some of us yearn to return to Sukkot, half a year ago, before the atrocities of Shemini Atzeret wiped away the joy of Simchat Torah. But we need to remember these two things: Hashem is always with us and we will come out stronger from this כּוּר הַבַּרְזֶל, the iron furnace, to be God’s immortal people (Devarim 4:20), and this dichotomy is ever-present in the life of a Jew. The sign of our suffering and the symbol of our salvation are intertwined. The sorrow and the joy are interconnected. The matza holds that very duality, on one hand, it is the food we ate as slaves, it is “poor man’s bread” (הא לחמא עניא) which we ate in Mitzrayim, and it is also the symbol of the bread which baked on our backs as we hurriedly left towards freedom. Our lives are filled with contradictions which somehow find harmony. Soon enough we will mark a tear-filled, painful Yom HaZikaron which will implausibly unfold into a celebratory Yom Ha’Atzmaut.

This is the resolve of the Jewish People. We hold our pain, and we find a way to celebrate. We hold two feelings at once. We send our precious children to join צה”ל with immense pride mixed with concern. We mourn our losses, and we grab onto life and celebrate it like no other people.

The matza holds this dichotomy just as the glistening fried artichokes do in Rome, in the springtime.