The Unique Power of Passover…and Freedom
Reflections from Adam Minsky
While there are many aspects of Passover that make the holiday exceptional, two come to mind that feel especially relevant this year.
The first is that Passover is almost certainly the most widely celebrated ritual in the Jewish world today. Just this week, the Israel Democracy Institute—which regularly polls Israelis on a range of issues—published a study showing that 96% of Jewish Israelis plan to attend a seder this year. Similar polling in the Diaspora shows that seder attendance is far more common than participating in other Jewish traditions, such as marking Shabbat in a meaningful way, fasting on Yom Kippur, or attending synagogue.
No doubt, many factors account for this. The exodus from Egypt is the origin story of the Jewish nation that defines so many aspects of our identity today. The seder is the ultimate expression of family as the cornerstone of Jewish continuity. And the experience weaves together the religious and cultural with the result that, regardless of one’s level of observance or views on matters of faith, the seder table has a way of making one feel at home. Whatever the reasons, Passover calls to the Jewish people—and the Jewish people respond to that call in a remarkable fashion.
The second is that the Haggadah we read together at the seder tells the story of the exodus from Egypt in the first person. It’s a subtle innovation, but one with tremendous implications. Contrast this with two festivals, Purim and Hanukkah, which also involve recalling moments in history when Jews overcame enemies who threatened our very existence. We recount those experiences as events that happened to others—to Jews who lived in a very different time and place from our own.
On Passover, we specifically make a point of declaring that we were slaves in Egypt, and the Divine miracles that liberated the Jewish people happened to each of us. On Purim and Hanukkah, we remember and symbolize. On Passover, we recreate and experience.
What can we gather from these two dimensions of the holiday? We learn that Passover, and the message of freedom that it embodies, has this exceptional quality of being simultaneously universal and personal.
Universal, in that the freedom of the Jewish people—and the thousands of years of rich Jewish life that followed our liberation from Egypt—is a gift that is the birthright of every Jew today.
Personal, in that Passover reveals that the gift of our freedom isn’t finite in value. It grows exponentially when we participate in our freedom by choosing to see it as a personal call to action in our own lives. It takes on new meaning when we act to support the freedom of others, including the people of Ukraine—Jewish and non-Jewish alike—who are on their own journey to freedom. And it reminds us that, while freedom is a gift that we receive, its true power is in the gifts that we make of our freedom.
As Rabbi David Wolpe has observed: “The Passover phrase, ‘let my people go,’ is abbreviated. The full sentence is, ‘Let my people go that they may serve me.’…True freedom is abundance of opportunity, not absence of obligation. Service to God, to one another, and to what is best in ourselves—those are freedoms.”
Tonight, as we gather around the seder table, may we be inspired by the abundance of opportunity to be found in our freedom, whether as a Jewish nation or as individual Jews. I wish you and your loved ones a happy, healthy, and meaningful Passover.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Pesach Sameach,
Adam Minsky
President & CEO
UJA Federation of Greater Toronto