Pesach D’var 2024
There is little dispute on the essential command of the Seder:
In every generation a person is required to imagine that they themselves came out from Egypt.
This is a command to imagine what it means to be descended from slaves. Recognizing the challenge of casting ourselves back 3,000 years to the mudpits of Egypt, the Rabbis have done various things to aid us in fulfilling this commandment.
For one thing, the Rabbis recast the land of Egypt more conceptually, playing on the Hebrew word for Egypt, “Mitzrayim” whose word root is “Tzar”, which means “narrow.” The map shows that Mitzrayim is literally a narrow place:
In this reframing, Mitzrayim becomes the place of our narrowness. It is the place of self-imposed limitations that keep us from living life fully and ethically, with freedom and joy. Who here is not plagued by a painful episode from their past? Or to their smart phone? Passover, more than any other holiday, asks us to consider what currently enslaves us and how do we free ourselves?
There is another path to appreciating our freedom, embedded in the name of the holiday. The word Pesach is now universally translated as “Passover.” That is reinforced by the story of the dramatic tenth plague, in which every Egyptian first born was killed in one horrific night. The Israelites smeared blood on their doorposts so that the angel of death would “Pasach” over their houses. One translation of Pasach is to “pass over” their houses.
But Rashi includes a second, more ancient translation of “Pasach” - that the Lord would have compassion on their houses and spare them. That original meaning of Pesach - compassion - has been overtaken by the image suggested by the name of the holiday, the angel of death skipping over the houses of the Israelites.
As Yair Rosenberg, who wrote about the significance of this older meaning of Pesach, put it:
The implications of this alternative understanding are significant. For one, it gives greater moral meaning to the observance of Pesach… [T]he holiday celebrates a deliberate act of compassion toward an enslaved people and calls on us to emulate that divine conduct ourselves. … When we commemorate Pesach, we commemorate compassion.
Pesach recalls God’s compassion for us, without which we would not be here, and commands us to pay it forward.
Compassion connects our enslavement to our freedom, instilling a sense of appreciation for what we have by witnessing the struggles of others. Yes, we look at ourselves and what enslaves us. But more importantly, we look at members of the global community and see what slavery and oppression look like today. In our country, with the millions of unhoused in the United States, oppressed workers prohibited or limited by law from striking or organizing, communities with poor health and education outcomes because of unequal allocation of resources, systemic racism and sexism, voter suppression, violation of a woman’s autonomy over her body, the list goes on. And around the world we see the forces of oppression ascending, those in power crushing the powerless. We grieve for the victimized. We are compelled to, knowing where we came from.
The command to think of ourselves as having left Egypt is a call to look within and without and consider who is enslaved and how we can set them free. May we rise to the challenge.
Moadim L’simchah!
Rich Moche