Reflections for Seder, 5784

It is easy to hear the story of the Jews enslavement in Egypt and then escape to freedom as ancient history. But, in many ways, it is my story, our story, today’s story.

This is my 77^th Passover. I learned the story and the Seder rituals at my parents’ table, and they knew of the escape to freedom. They were forced to flee Nazi Germany, leaving everything and almost everyone they knew. They themselves had passed over. It wasn’t ancient history. The plates on our seder table, the silverware we use, the red velvet matzo cover made for my dad were all theirs, having miraculously survived the holocaust and their oceanic -- as well as metaphorical -- crossing.

Today as in Biblical times, men, women, and children are trapped, if not in concentration camps, then concentrated in crowded conditions without food, water, shelter, ways to provide for themselves and their families, with no exit, no hope.

Today we acknowledge that this country is not without guilt. We rounded up Japanese living amongst us and shipped them off to concentration camps after Pearl Harbor. And we’re living with the legacy of slavery and discrimination baked into the American story and scarring the lives and livelihoods of Black Americans to this day.

We acknowledge, too, the inhuman conditions in Gaza, sadly at least in part because of fellow Jews.

And there’s no shortage of megalomaniacal and demonic leaders, the pharaohs of today, the Hitlers of the recent past, the Putins, Trumps and Netanyahus in the news we read, fear, and hate.

With them there’s the rising tide of totalitarianism and, even closer to home, antisemitism. We know how the Passover story ends with the promise of a new land, a new start. We don’t – and can’t – know how our story will evolve or where, when, or how it will end.

Passover honors and commemorates our darkest moments but also celebrates the arrival of spring, the promise of new growth, a new harvest of wellbeing, hope, and renewal. The news may be hard to read and see, but there are buds on bushes and trees, fresh grass and flowers in our gardens and fields, even in the cracks on roads and sidewalks. Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” offers the springtime reminder that “there’s a crack in everything,” but “that’s how the light gets in.” Passover is about cracks in our history and our lives. And it’s about light. Our grandboys are the light, and we are the lightkeepers. Sadder and wiser for what we know about the legacy of darkness, we get to pass over to them the resilience and resolve to see the light. That’s not just our sacred charge, it is our sacred privilege. That’s why we gather at tables like this around the globe, why we’ve gathered like this across time and across place. To commemorate, to celebrate, to engage. I’m glad and grateful that we can be together to retell and to renew.