Thought experiments…

“In every generation a person must see herself as if sh/e had personally gone out of Egypt…” Every year these words are chanted during the festival of Passover, the Jewish celebration of spring, liberation and rebirth. Every year Jews (and friends and allies) gather for the ritual meal, the Seder, and are invited not only to retell the saga of the Israelites in Egypt, but to relive it, as if we personally had been redeemed from bondage. The sages who composed this liturgy were educators; they wanted the story to penetrate not only our minds but our bones.

In Jewish tradition Egypt/Mitzrayim has come to be understood not only as a historical place, but also as a circumstance. Mitzrayim in Hebrew means ‘straits’ - the narrow and constrained places from which, says the psalmist, we call out in anguish. Thus the Passover imperative expands: we must all, for example, see ourselves as if we personally had lost everything in Katrina, as if we had been slaves in the American south, as if our streets were mined with explosives, as if rockets were falling in our own backyards. For some more than others this takes effort, imagination, and often a plane ticket. Yet even when we simply listen to others and observe, try to identify with their circumstances, their history, their pain, we are engaged in a sacred endeavor. We move beyond the narrow constraints of our own existence and become much larger people, with more room to grow, and with more to give. That is its own kind of liberation.

Which brings us back to the Passover liturgy: “In every generation a person must see himself as if s/he had been liberated from Egypt.” The focus here is not only on the bondage, but on the liberation. Generations of Israelites lived an oppressively constrained existence. But finally, it is taught, things change. The clouds lifted, a tyrant fell, a new generation found its voice, and its power, and its feet, and went forth. We at the Passover Seder are invited to put on their shoes; their new beginning can be ours too.

May our spirits expand to make room for the pains and the hopes of others. May we not lose hope that the bonds that constrain each of us, in myriad ways, might one day give way to freedom. May our lungs fill to capacity with the fresh air of the beckoning, uncharted wilderness.

Rabbi Shosh Dworsky

Associate Chaplain