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    The Pesach of the future

    The Haggadah reminds us that, inspired by the Pesach of the past, there will be another Pesach redemption some time in the future.

    Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones, by Gustave Dore, 1866

    Tradition has it that Ezekiel 37, the passage about the dry bones, will be activated on Pesach.

    The sages discussed whether this will literally come true.

    Some rabbis said that the vision did come true in the past, in Ezekiel’s own days, with the dead rising from their graves, donning t’fillin, getting married and having children (Sanh. 92b).

    Similarly, the future redemption will see the dead resuming life and its earthly activities.

    A foretaste of this future redemption has actually happened in our own time, with the curse of death in the Holocaust followed by the blessing of life in Israel.

    This thought explains why Rav Yitzchak HaLevi Herzog and the author Shai Agnon inserted in the prayer they composed for the State of Israel the belief that Israel is reshit tz’michat ge’ulatenu, “The beginning of the flowering of our redemption”.

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