Isaac Bashevis Singer received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1978 and startled the Stockholm audience by addressing them in Yiddish. He said, Loshon fun golus, ohn a land, ohn grenitzen, nish gshtitzt fun kein shum meluchoh… (“a language of exile, a people without a land, without frontiers, without a government, a language with possesses no words for weapons, ammunition, military exercises, war tactics; a language despised by gentiles and emancipated Jews….searches for an enteral truth, the essence of being…to find an answer to suffering, to reveal love in the abyss of cruelty and injustice.”).
Why do we constantly and consistently remember the Exodus from Egypt in every service and dedicate an entire eight days festival to its remembrance? Zacher l’tziat mitzraim, we cry in every service! Why?
Is it to remember that we have an obligation to open the gates of freedom for the enslaved and oppressed? If we learn this lesson from Pesach it is well. There is much pain in the world, too much suffering. There are an infinite number of tears shed from cruelty and meanness in our world. Every day on the news we hear of atrocities committed across the globe and in our backyard of Columbia, South Carolina. If anything, we should be moved to make a difference; to shout scream and decry the senseless wounds inflicted on the innocent and guilty alike. Our redemption from slavery ought to bring out empathy for the downtrodden. And in case we are not emotionally moved, God forbid, we are emphatically told, to “unlock fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords, the yoke to let the oppressed go free…”. Recognize the words? We repeat them each Yom Kippur. This is the Divine Command, the mitzvah, that we are directed to follow on the holiest day of the year.
Perhaps we retell the Passover story each year (as well mentioning it every day) to remind us that we are not “it.” Our lives are infinitesimal blips in the pages of history. We will not be remembered beyond three generations, if fortunate. But God and the Promise are enduring. Great grandchildren will learn the same lessons we are being taught today and we were taught as youngsters. Will humanity have grown any wiser? And God will still be there.
We did not redeem ourselves from slavery. We did not bring about the ten plagues. Manna did not fall accidently for forty years. We did not create the air that we breathe or the gravitational forces that keep our solar system in careful balance. We pride ourselves on sending an unmanned vehicle to Mars while knowing full well that solar systems, far more vast than the ones we know, exist outside our limited vision. Maybe Pesach is all about remembering that we are temporary tenants on God’s earth.
Perhaps Pesach is to remind us of a higher law, a justice that we were given and expanded through the millennia to ensure that we could infuse the world with righteousness that does not depend on someone’s idea of morality but comes from God. I have spent the better part of this year immersed in study of Talmud. In it I found myself swept up in the Godly and relentless pursuit of a justice where conversations with scholars Akiva, Maimonides and Louis Jacobs continue to ask, “What is Torah telling me?” “What is God telling that I have avoided all these years?” The quest for real justice does not reside in anyone’s opinion. We all have opinions (as did Stalin, Pol Pot, the Proud Boys, Hitler…) but what is real righteousness?
Maybe Pesach is trying to delve deeply into our souls and remind us that we are supposed to return to our ancient prayers, learn them, understand them and direct them to heaven. After all the seder is not a playtime, or entertainment; it is reaching inward and outward to make our souls connect with the Holy One, blessed be He. It is prayer.
May it be God’s will that our hearts open up to the nuances and lessons of Pesach that are invitations to personal change.
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