On Passover 2025
What strikes me this year - as we celebrate this ancient holiday, read a 1000+ year old text, that I've read at least 100 times
On Passover, we gather with family and friends for seders. We tell the mythical story of our liberation from Egypt. It's a story we know well from Torah, and history, and the movies -- the story of slavery, the confrontation of Moses and Pharoah, the plagues, and the crossing of the Red Sea. We follow the steps, laid out in order, of blessings, texts, and memories. In this tradition that's thousands of years old, we retell the story of enslavement and liberation that we have chosen as our founding story. We read the same Haggadah that has been set for at least a thousand years.
For the 50+ years that I've been alive, we Americans and we Jews and we Jewish Americans have been in ascendency. So when we took upon ourselves the commandment to feel as if we had been in liberated from slavery, it was hard. Many of us facilitated creative discussions about what 'modern day slavery' might be. We talked about the media, and then technology, and then cell phones; maybe we talked about the prison industrial complex. (Of course, that was naive. We were not so free. And real slavery was not a thing only of the past.)
This year felt different. We are no longer in ascendency. We can no longer afford to be naive. I have been thinking less of the liberation and more about how we descended, from the height of Joseph's power down into the slavery of Mitzrayim.
For most of the 1000+ years that Jews have read the Haggadah, we were not in ascendency. We have been minorities, marginalized, oppressed, scared, pursued, and killed. So I was looking for what the Haggadah might have said to people then.
I was drawn to this paragraph in the Haggadah. It's the section in which we tell the story. "We were slaves of Pharoah in Mitzrayim." Yes. We uncover the matzah, the bread of our affliction. We invite the poor and hungry to eat. We praise God for our redemption. We repeat the commandment to teach our children, and just begin to tell the story of our redemption. And then this:
"A tale is told about Rabbi Eliezar, Rabbi Joshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Tarfon. They were gathered in B’nei B’rak, discussing the Exodus from Mitzrayim all through the night, until the students came to them and said, “Masters, the time has come to recite the morning Sh’ema.”
And just like that, we are no longer in the present, or leaving mythical Egypt. We are in B'nei B'ark, a real place, a town in Israel, along the coastal plain. It's about 130 CE. The Romans had conquered the Israelite kingdom ~200 years before. The Romans desecrated and then destroyed the Holy Temple. They forbade people from learning and teaching the Torah or their traditions. They forbade the rabbis from training and consecrating any new rabbis.
The Israelites face an existential threat. Without the Temple, they can not perform their rites. They can not celebrate the holidays, including the pilgrimage holidays like Passover.
And here sit these rabbis, conducting their seder, perhaps. They still reel from the desecration and destruction of the Temple in which they served. They are traumatized by the end of the whole sacrificial life of the Jewish people. Some traveled as emissaries to Rome, to try to secure some religious and ritual freedom for their people, so that a remnant of Judaism might survive.
They are hiding out in caves, trying to figure out what’s next. They don't pin their hopes in going back. Instead, they fundamentally re-invent Judaism. If the Temple is destroyed and the people can no longer perform their sacrifices, what can they do to be Jewish? If this communal experience is impossible, what can they do to hold themselves together?
The rabbis creatively combine history, and text, and myth. They distill fundamental values and create new rituals to manifest those values. They raise up many disciples who continue to learn and teach, debate, and evolve Judaism to be something new, something that survived.
The individual rabbis are each incredible but different. Rabbi Tarfon, for example, is wealthy, but very humble. He is described as a realist, and concerned with one's actions. Still, the Talmud records stories of how he helped the poor and went out of his way to bring joy to a bride and groom. Rabbi Akiva spent much of his life a poor and uneducated shepherd, until one day he had an epiphany and dedicated himself to learning. He hired a tutor. He learned the aleph-bet. He is a student of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua. He masters not only the texts they taught but also the logic of their arguments, and challenges them on everything. He's described as being more optimistic, and concerned more with study. Over time, he became so learned and so respected that he became the Chief Rabbi. He was such a great man that the Jerusalem Talmud calls him “the father of the world”.
And it was he who is hosting the Seder of that evening, a discussion through the night about redemption, comfort, and hope.
And though he's not in the text or in the cave, we know that these rabbis were in relationship with another important man: Simon Bar Kochba. Bar Kochba was a general who organized a rebellion against the Romans. People were split. Some supported him, thinking he would defeat the Romans. In fact, some thought he was the Messiah. Others thought he was dangerous for the Jewish people. In 132, Bar Kochba initiated his campaign against the Romans. He and his armies establish and maintain a new Jewish state. But then, after three years, the Romans crush Bar Kochba, and the Romans punish the Jewish people collectively for his rebellion.
On previous seder nights, this story has always seemed like an aside, an interruption to the flow of the story of liberation from Egypt, an introduction to the rabbis, and their process of reimagining text and recording debates. This year, all of this strikes me as something more, much richer, and more important in these times.
These rabbis face an existential threat. Their Temple, their way of life, and the core of their people has been destroyed. They have different ideas and represent different approaches to finding their way forward. Some are bereft; maybe they wish they could go back to how things had been. Some focus on the facts. Some are optimistic. They imagine a new future. Some are preparing to take up arms, even as others wish they wouldn't. In the end, as a group, they reinvent Judaism, rooted in the same values, but with new norms, rituals, and celebrations.
And in our times? What inspiration will we find? Who are we going to be? What path forward will we pursue? What will we, individually and collectively, do in the moment? Will we imagine a new future? Will we be focused on the facts that seem so dire or think optimistically about the future? Will we study or act? Will we organize an army and resist? Will we be fearful, even of those who fight in our name? Which of these men from 130 CE do we most need as a guide for our thoughts and emotions and energies?
As Passover ends, we look forward to the holiday of Shavuot. Shavuot was also a pilgrimage holiday. It, too, was tied to a historical event; just as Passover was tied to the story of our exodus, Shavuot was tied to revelation at Mount Sinai, when individually we committed to living lives in accordance with God's way, and the mixed multitude that left Mitzrayim became a people.
In Jewish tradition, we count the seven days of the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot. The mystics connected the weeks and days with the divine qualities that structure the universe: Chesed or kindness, Gevurah or strength, Tiferet or spiritual balance, Netzach or endurance, Hod or humility, Yesod or connection, and Malkuth or nobility. There's a custom of counting these days and exploring these qualities. We meditate on one combination of these qualities each day, and how they manifest within us. We prepare to come again to Mount Sinai and commit ourselves, individually and collectively, to a life prescribed by a righteous path, and the life we're each specifically called up to live.
As we move forward into this year, perhaps we'll reference these examples from history. I hope we reflect on our virtues and strengths, and decide how we want to move forward. I hope we're animated by this understanding: we can create a new reality for ourselves, even as our past ways are being destroyed.
Who knows what's ahead and where we'll be next year when we meet for our seders? But I hope that we can endure, that we can each contribute to a future that's better than the one determined without us. I hope we find a way forward consistent with all the best qualities of who we are called into existence to be.