Pathos is understanding feelings, particularly disease (think pathology) and the root causes of sadness. Empathy is related to pathos but is more about feeling what other people feel, understanding them on an emotional level. Both are commands on Pesach.
-On the holy day we open ourselves to understanding the pathology of hatred, the superiority of one people, or class, over another. Were our ancestors slaves in a distant land? Yes, historians have located the time and name of this people from ancient Egyptian documents. These are your ancestors. They were untermenschen, subhuman, ignored and abused. Our concerned God heard the pitiful cries and sent His deliverance releasing them from the lash of their overlords.
The pathology of understanding the past should lead us back to God and knowledgeable enough to recognize those same signs of raw discrimination emanating from hatred in our day. And those signs are present now.
-We are commanded to feel as if we were personally liberated from bondage. This is empathy. We need to feel the empathy of being on the side of the oppressed. Everyone understands pain. We have all felt oppressed and abused at some point(s) in our lives. We used those reference points to feel the prize of liberation. It is a great gift that we should not take for granted. We are free here. We have a Jewish homeland.
Virtually every day we learn of some group in the world that is being oppressed. We have to make a decision to be on the side of the victim or victimizer. Who would dare to stand with the victimizer? Every time we are silent we are providing fuel for the victimizer to carry on their path of hatred.
Empathy is two sided. As Hillel pointed out millennia ago, “If I am not for myself who will be for me? And if I am only for myself what am I?”
We are not fulfilling our mandate if we do not stand up for ourselves, our people. And we are woefully inadequate when we do not stand in solidarity with the other.
