What the Table Remembers
- Uriel ben Avraham
- Jan 23
- 4 min read
There is a falafel stand at Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem that changed a man's life. Not because the falafel was extraordinary — though if you've been to Mahane Yehuda, you know it might have been. But because of what he saw when the fried chickpea balls came out of the oil. Round. Golden-brown. Warm.
David "Dugo" Leitner was fourteen years old in January 1945 when the Nazis marched him out of Auschwitz. Starving, freezing, wearing camp clothes in the Polish snow, he dreamed about his mother. She had promised him that in the Land of Israel, bilkelach — small, round bread rolls — grew on trees.
She told him: "David, when you get to Israel, when you reach Jerusalem, you'll never go hungry again."
Most of the prisoners on that march died. Dugo didn't. He made it to Israel in 1949, walked into the Jerusalem market, and saw the falafel. And the shape of it — warm, round, golden — brought his mother's voice back.
From that day forward, every January 18, Dugo ate a double portion of falafel. One for himself. One for the promise. A private ritual of survival that he performed quietly for decades. This past Sunday, three years after Dugo's passing at ninety-four, tens of thousands of Israelis — schoolchildren, soldiers, families — lined up at falafel stands across the country for Operation Dugo, now in its eleventh year. The Knesset speaker made falafel in the parliament building. Israeli embassies handed out portions abroad. A commemorative stamp was issued. All because one man ate a meal, once a year, and remembered.
If that isn't Jewish joy, I don't know what is. Joy infused with sorrow and flush with food. Tradition. Eating. Laughing. Coming together.
The parsha this Shabbat is Bo — Exodus 10:1 through 13:16 — and it contains the last three plagues, the death of the firstborn, and the Exodus itself. But the Torah spends remarkably little time on the drama. The plagues are dispatched in a few verses each. The departure from Egypt — arguably the defining event in Jewish history — gets a paragraph. What the parsha lingers on, obsessively, is what comes after: how to remember it.
Four times in Bo, the Torah pauses the action to talk about children asking questions.
וּלְמַ֡עַן תְּסַפֵּר֩ בְּאׇזְנֵ֨י בִנְךָ֜ וּבֶן־בִּנְךָ֗ אֵ֣ת אֲשֶׁ֤ר הִתְעַלַּ֙לְתִּי֙ בְּמִצְרַ֔יִם וְאֶת־אֹתֹתַ֖י אֲשֶׁר־שַׂ֣מְתִּי בָ֑ם וִֽידַעְתֶּ֖ם כִּי־אֲנִ֥י יְהֹוָֽה׃
and that you may recount in the hearing of your child and of your child’s child how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I displayed My signs among them—in order that you may know that I am GOD.”
That's the second verse of the parsha. Before the locusts arrive, before the darkness falls, before a single firstborn dies — God tells Moses the point of all of it. Not punishment. Not justice. Storytelling. "So that you may recount in the hearing of your child and of your child's child." The plagues exist so there will be something to tell.
Then again, in the instructions for the Passover sacrifice:
וְהָיָ֕ה כִּֽי־יֹאמְר֥וּ אֲלֵיכֶ֖ם בְּנֵיכֶ֑ם מָ֛ה הָעֲבֹדָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את לָכֶֽם׃
And when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this rite?’
And again, in the commandment about matzah:
וְהִגַּדְתָּ֣ לְבִנְךָ֔ בַּיּ֥וֹם הַה֖וּא לֵאמֹ֑ר בַּעֲב֣וּר זֶ֗ה עָשָׂ֤ה יְהֹוָה֙ לִ֔י בְּצֵאתִ֖י מִמִּצְרָֽיִם׃
And you shall explain to your child on that day, ‘It is because of what GOD did for me when I went free from Egypt.’
And once more, in the consecration of the firstborn:
וְהָיָ֞ה כִּֽי־יִשְׁאָלְךָ֥ בִנְךָ֛ מָחָ֖ר לֵאמֹ֣ר מַה־זֹּ֑את וְאָמַרְתָּ֣ אֵלָ֔יו בְּחֹ֣זֶק יָ֗ד הוֹצִיאָ֧נוּ יְהֹוָ֛ה מִמִּצְרַ֖יִם מִבֵּ֥ית עֲבָדִֽים׃
And when, in time to come, a child of yours asks you, saying, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall reply, ‘It was with a mighty hand that GOD brought us out from Egypt, the house of bondage.
Four questions. Four answers. The Haggadah later builds its famous four children out of these verses. But here, in the raw text, the repetition does something simpler: it insists.
Tell them. When they ask, tell them. When they don't ask, tell them anyway. The telling is the point.
And notice what the Torah chooses as the vehicle for transmission. Not a scroll. Not a lecture. A meal. Eat this matzah. Don't eat this bread. The instructions in Bo are specific down to the method of cooking and the timeline. The memory lives in the food.
We flew back to Atlanta this week after a stretch abroad, and the first thing we did when we got home — before unpacking, before sorting through the mail — was stop so we could stock the fridge.
Coming home is its own kind of remembering. Your body knows the kitchen before your brain catches up. The height of the counter. The sound the cabinet makes. The particular way the light falls through the window at four in the afternoon in January.
Dugo Leitner's falafel wasn't a symbolic choice. He didn't sit down one day and decide that chickpeas would represent his survival. He walked into a market, saw something round and warm come out of the oil, and his mother's voice returned to him. The memory chose the food. His body recognized it before his brain caught up — the same way your hand reaches for a familiar mug, the same way your feet know the path to shul even when you're half-asleep on a Saturday morning.
The Torah understands this. Bo doesn't say "write down what happened" or "build a monument." It says: eat this, and when your child asks why, tell them. The question comes from the table. The ritual provokes the curiosity. The food is the trigger, and the story is the response.
Dugo's great-grandson was born recently. His parents named him David Amichai — David for Dugo, Amichai because Dugo ended every family gathering with the same two words: Am Yisrael Chai. The people of Israel lives. A name carrying a man's last words forward into a mouth that will someday learn to say them.
Four times the Torah says: when your child asks. It doesn't say "if." It says "when." The question is coming. The only thing the parent has to do is make sure there's something on the table worth asking about.
Shabbat shalom.
— Uriel ben Avraham
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