Between the seder and the sirens |
Every year, we sit around our seder tables and say the same words: “Avadim hayinu” — we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.
Not THEY were slaves. WE were.
We are told to see ourselves as if we, too, went out from the land of Egypt. To tell the story again and again. To teach it diligently unto our children. To taste the bitterness. To sit with the hunger. To remember what it means to be powerless, to be oppressed, to be at the mercy of those who do not see our full humanity.
And this year — we will say these words while missiles from Iran carve their way through the dark. Sirens interrupt the ordinary rhythm of life. Children learn the distance to shelters the way they learn the Four Questions.
Even though we have each other, we still feel isolated.
We say “Avadim hayinu” with one ear tuned to the possibility of a warning.
Memory is not just for the sake of identity — it’s for the sake of empathy, morality, and justice. After all, we know what it means to be the stranger, we are commanded to love the stranger. “For you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
But this year, that commandment feels heavy — at least for me.
Because the stranger is not abstract.
The stranger lives here.
The stranger stands at checkpoints.
The stranger can’t harvest their olive trees.
The stranger lives in places without adequate shelter, where the sirens sound but safety is not guaranteed, where the police assume they are a danger and never IN danger.
And if we are honest — painfully honest — there are moments when we fail that commandment.
Moments when fear narrows us because the stranger is sometimes our enemy.
And grief hardens us, and racism, sometimes loud and sometimes quiet, slips into the space where empathy is supposed to live.
The Haggadah is not a self-congratulatory victory lap. It’s a radical act of the shaping of a people and a nation. And it insists that liberation is not a one-time thing — it is a call to action and a way of life.
Which raises a harder question this year:
What happens when we are fighting for our survival — and still called to remain human?
There is a powerful midrash that says when the Egyptians drowned in the sea, the angels began to sing — but God stopped them. “My children are drowning,” God said, “and you want to sing?”
We humans are not angels. We are allowed to sing at the seder, to rejoice in our freedom. It’s even understandable when we rejoice at the downfall of our enemies. And still, we spill wine to diminish our joy.
This year, the lines blur.
Because we are not only facing enemies beyond the borders of our precious tent.
We are also arguing, bitterly, about the soul of our own country.
About the meaning of democracy itself.
The debates over the fault lines in our tiny country have not just filled the streets — they have entered our living rooms, our tables, our families. They sit with us at the seder whether we invite them or not.
We argue about who we are.
About what kind of nation we are becoming.
And still — the seder begins.
“We were slaves in Egypt”
And still — we pour the wine.
We were brought forth with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.
And still — we sit together.
But even in our joy, we must hold complexity. We must remember that our enemies are also human. That even those who do us harm are still b’tzelem Elohim, created in the image of God.
And so — again — we reduce our joy by spilling out wine and diminishing our cups when we remember the plagues wrought on Pharaoh and his people.
This year, that gesture feels less symbolic.
Drops of wine fall like small, measured griefs.
For what war does to the human heart.
“Never again” is a sacred vow we hold as Jews.
But it must mean more than never again to us.
It must mean never again to anyone — not if we are to live up to the words we speak every year.
And that includes how we treat each other inside this fragile, fractious, extraordinary society we are still building together.
We were slaves. We know what it means to suffer.
And so we must not harden our hearts.
Not even when we are hurt. Not even when we are afraid.
And I know how hard it is, because I sometimes feel my own heart turn as cold and merciless as a dead star shattered in space.
Because fear is real.
Because survival is not limited to old dusty parchment.
We are allowed to be afraid.
We are allowed to defend ourselves.
But we must not become Pharaoh in response.
And somewhere between the sirens and the singing, between the arguments and the rituals, a question lingers over the table:
How will we tell this story?
But generations from now.
When our decendants sit at their own seder tables and ask what this time was like.
Will they say we were united?
Will they say we were righteous?
Will they say we were afraid?
That, at least, will be true.
But I hope — I really hope — they will also be able to say this:
That even in the middle of war,
even in the middle of fear,
even in the middle of our deepest disagreements, we did not forget what it means to be a people.
Because once — long before missiles and court rulings and headlines — we stood together in the shadow of Sinai.
But as a chaotic family.
through exile and return, through slavery and sovereignty,
through destruction and rebuilding,
through arguments that never really ended and never will… we have stayed one.
We were slaves in Egypt.
And we are family always.