The Fifth Question: Who Is Coming To Save Us?

I realized the flowers from my mother’s yard were #BringThemHome daffodils. Turns out we didn’t need the extra one on the Seder plate after all. What we did need—what I forgot—was the lemon. Rachel Goldberg-Polin had asked us to remember. I should have.

In other news: gluten-free matzo? Shockingly edible. Well-salted. Almost… enjoyable. And no, we do not do “that fish thing in the jar.”

It was only four years ago that I learned gefilte fish isn’t a species—like, say, Nemo. A revelation rivaled only by the moment I discovered, nine years prior, that pickles are cucumbers. My education continues.

This level of WTF seamlessly segues to our Seder, where my brother’s tone-deaf operatics elicit intergenerational cackles—and possibly a few from the afterlife.

(Hi, Dad. We miss your pretend snores before Reader #1 could even begin… and we miss you all the time, terribly .)

So, we are not what you’d call a reverent bunch. When “Jesus Christ Our Lord” gets jokingly inserted into the Haggadah, my mother sighs and wonders why she bothers when “no one takes it seriously.”

I don’t know if this makes her feel better, but showing up is taking it seriously.

Everyone saw them burn the Governor’s house.
(We didn’t expect a word from the non-Jews, so don’t worry about it.)

So yes, “serious” is the show-up. And the miracle is that we still can, after all of it:

Displacement. Slaughter. Harassment. Decapitation. Forced conversion. Burned alive. Expelled. Crushed. Erased.

Spanning m i l l e n n i a.

We were a nation in exile that returned to its ancestral territories and restored our indigenous sovereignty. Passover gave us the blueprint for #LandBack and we should take heed: don’t wait for the cavalry—be the cavalry.

We stopped outsourcing our survival long ago. Self-protection, self-defense, self-determination—that’s the legacy.

And the most enduring form of protection? Fortified souls.

You want to protect Jewish children, teens, and students on college campuses? By all means—hire security, lock the doors, scan the perimeter. But don’t stop there:

• Teach them who they are.

• Root them in strength and story.

• Show them they descend from the most resilient people on Earth.

Because the answer to the fifth question is that no one is coming to save us but us.

• Not the government—unless there’s an election to win or a donor to appease.

• Not local leaders, who can condemn antisemitism only if it doesn’t offend anyone louder.

• Not the universities—where it’s up for debate when students can chant support for Hamas under “free speech,” deface hostage posters with “Kill all Zionists.”

• Not the diversity offices that manage to include every identity except ours—unless we’re being labeled “white oppressors.”

• Not the influencers who’ll post a black square, a rainbow, a keffiyeh—but never a yellow ribbon.

• Not the social justice coalitions that will march for everyone but the Jew bleeding next to them.

• Not the media who’ll dig up every complicated context for every act of terror—except when the victims are us.

• And not the progressive voices who love Jews quiet, unarmed, apologetic—and preferably dead.

It’s always been us. Just us — Still here. Still botching Dayenu.

My dad used to say, “if you can’t laugh at it, you can’t live with it.“ But we’re not gonna laugh about the fifth question. This one we really need to take seriously.

For this and the next generations to be safe, they must be strong. Not just protected—but powerful.

Give them story. Give them identity. Give them training. Give them fire.

Make them dangerous to those who’d erase them—not with violence, but with unshakable clarity.

From the river to the sea? F*ck around and find out.

We’ve got this. You’ve got this.

Happy Passover. Am Yisrael Chai.