What Does Pesach Mean to You? |
From burning chametz in Mexico to cracking jokes at a family Seder, Jewish voices share what the ancient festival of liberation means to them today.
As Jewish communities around the world prepare to gather around Seder tables, light candles, and retell the ancient story of the Exodus from Egypt, I spoke with rabbis, activists, entrepreneurs, and young adults to ask a simple but profound question: What does Pesach mean to you?
Their answers — by turns spiritual, political, deeply personal, and even comedic — reveal a holiday that continues to resonate and reinvent itself across generations.
Executive Director, Maryland Hillel
At a Passover program in Mexico the burning of chametz is more than a ritual cleanup — it is an act of self-examination.
“We are burning the physical bread as a manifestation to eliminate all of the haughtiness in our lives, because bread and hametz is about the leaven that we have too much of.”
For Rabbi Israel, matzah — just flour and water — symbolizes a return to humility and rootedness. “We want to go back to the haughtiness of our roots when we do matzah,” he explained. “So we’re eliminating the sort of inclinations in our society” — an invitation, issued on the same day the Jewish people became a nation thousands of years ago, that feels no less urgent today.
Jewish Activist & Content Creator
For Shayna Natanya, Pesach is not a passive inheritance — it is a daily act of choosing.
“Passover is about liberation. It’s about a people who refuse to stay enslaved, who chose freedom and agency.”
Speaking with unmistakable urgency, Natanya drew a direct line between the Exodus story and contemporary Jewish identity. “It reminds me that just being Jewish isn’t something I inherit. It’s something I live and I cherish, and it’s dynamic,” she said. “It’s choosing resilience daily.”
This year, she noted, the holiday carries particular weight: “It’s choosing to stand with my people, even when it’s hard, and especially when it’s unpopular. And this year, it feels especially real.”
Founder & Host, Tikun Talks
Speaking from Mexico City, Deborah Apeloig — the founder and host of Tikun Talks, a platform for Jewish conversation and healing — offered perhaps the most philosophically searching reflection of all.
“Pesach reminds me that freedom is not a given, but it’s built every day. Not just leaving Egypt, but asking ourselves, what am I still a slave to? And how can I live a more aligned, more conscious, more free life?”
For Apeloig, personal liberation is inseparable from communal responsibility. “My own freedom enables me to keep doing my part to repair the world,” she said. “One conversation and one mitzvah at a time.”
SETH AND ISAAC GALENA
Founders, Bangitout.com
Leave it to the founders of the Jewish pop-culture website Bangitout.com to cut right to the existential heart of the Seder.
“Pesach is all about family trauma. And watching everyone go through a dinner together with four glasses of wine and see what kind of questions come up about your life’s decisions.”
Their prescription? “That’s why we just make jokes the entire time.” It is, of course, a time-honored coping strategy — and, one might argue, a deeply Jewish one.
MICHAEL HERMAN & CALEB SCHWARTZ
Young Adults, Jewish Community
In two words, Michael Herman and Caleb Schwartz — representatives of a younger generation carrying the torch of tradition — said it all:
“Pesach means family.”
It is, perhaps, the thread that runs through every answer — family in the immediate sense, family in the communal sense, and the family of an entire people stretching across millennia, bound by memory and obligation and the smell of matzah.