This Shabbat is Shabbat Hagadol, the ‘great’ Shabbat. There are various reasons given why this Shabbat is so named. The range from the mention in the closing words of the Haftorah of the great day of G-d to the fact that the Rabbi on that day traditionally gives a long or ‘great’ sermon. One of the more weighty reasons concerns the date of the original Shabbat Hagadol. According to Jewish tradition the Jews left Egypt on a Thursday. That being so, the Shabbat before fell on the 10th of Nisan, as it does this year. If we look in the Torah we see that this date has a special significance for the original Pesach ritual. It was on this day that the Torah commanded the Israelites to set aside the lamb for the Pesach offering to be brought on the 14th. This day was on a Shabbat, a day when the Jews did not normally tend their animals. This would cause the surrounding Egyptian population to be curious what was going on. They would discover that the Jews were planning to sacrifice their divinity, the lamb, in four days time. Yet, because of their fear of Moses and G-d following the previous plagues, they did nothing. For this reason this Shabbat is called great, because of the great miracle that took place on that day. Yet the true greatness of the day, and indeed its miracle, may lie not so much in the reaction of the Egyptians but in the actions of the Israelites. They, despite the fact that it might upset the Egyptians, had the courage to do G-d’s will openly. For this reason G-d commanded them to take the lamb four days early, so they couldn’t hide what they were doing. In doing so, they began the long road to true freedom. They began to free themselves from mental enslavement to their Egyptian masters and stopped worrying what the goyim would say. That made this Shabbat a truly great one, to be commemorated every year by having a Shabbat Hagadol the week before Pesach. There is an important lesson here for us today. Following the recent anti-Israel hysteria, some might think it is time to keep our heads down, not to talk to openly about Israel or stand up for ourselves. This Shabbat teaches us precisely the opposite. We must not surrender the public square to our enemies but stand up for Israel and Jewish rights. That is how we become truly great and truly free.