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My Grandfather’s

Exodus from Egypt

A Passover Tradition © 2022 Lactalis Heritage Brands Nachshon Meir Spiegelman

Since 1882 f you would ask my Saba “What was
your Yetziat Mitzrayim (Exodus)?” (a
question worth asking any person,
Iespecially a grandparent), you’ll
receive the following answer – his visit
to Israel almost seventy years ago!
“During this journey, which I will never
forget, I found a country and I found a
wife,” says Saba – the two things that
redeem a person from loneliness and
wandering. Although it’s still unclear to
me who made the first move during their
two-week sail from New York to Israel,
meeting your spouse on a ship to Israel
is pretty romantic!
Nachshonʼs grandparents on their way to Eilat in 1954.
“Already then, at our young age, Savta and
I decided: we would return to this place, stone. But when he came that first time
for this is where we belong. We never to this holy and sacred place, he touched
asked ourselves if we should immigrate the wall and began to weep. His heart
to Israel, but only when. Although it took opened when he touched those stones,
us another forty years until we actually stones he never imagined he would feel
arrived – forty years of anticipation and with his own hands. Unprepared for the
preparation – in the end, we came home.” experience, he didn’t know how to react
During my grandparents’ incredible visit, or what he should do. He thought for a
they met David Ben-Gurion and Shai moment, took out a book of Tehillim, and
Agnon, volunteered at an immigrant and began to read them with a passion and
refugee absorption camp outside of Jeru- focus he had never before experienced.
salem and traveled all over the country. Saba is our family’s storyteller, and par-
But there was one place they did not get ticularly for us, his grandchildren, who Nachshonʼs grandparentsʼ 60th wedding anniversary
to visit, a place Saba never thought he were born in he Land. We, the generation in 2016.
would reach in his lifetime – the Kotel. born into a world of miracles that are too
He remembers standing at the Tower of easy to take for granted, who have only
David when the guide turned the group’s known a rebuilt and united Jerusalem,
attention to the Jordanian snipers who must learn the story of the journey, from
were standing on the other side. From a the generation that left Egypt.
distance, he could see part of that holy
place; but he could not reach it, like Moshe “And it shall be, when you come to the
on Har Nevo. Land which Hashem your G-d has given
you for an inheritance… And you shall
Incredibly, the Six Day War broke out, speak and say before Hashem your G-d: ‘A
miracles happened and Jerusalem was Nachshon Meir Spiegelman
KOSHER FOR united, now and forever. Within a few wandering Aramean was my father, and is a high school educator, certified
PASSOVER he went down into Egypt, and sojourned
months, my Saba was on his way – this there… And Hashem brought us forth out tour guide and the author of “Storky’s
time by plane – to the Land of Israel. Journey Home”, a children’s book about
of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an the many birds who migrate over Israel,
Today, my Saba does not overly sanctify outstretched arm… And He has brought us a parable for the symbiotic and con-
or obsess over the Kotel, for he considers into this place, and has given us this Land, stant relationship between the Jewish
the walls of the heart (ב ֵּ ל ַה ת ֹורי ִק) to be a Land flowing with milk and honey’” people and the Land of Israel. The
the ikkar, the main thing, not the walls of (Devarim 26:1, 5, 8–9). book can be purchased on Amazon.

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