By Emma Berdugo

This week is Passover! The two passages we read from the Torah this week are Exodus 12:21-51 and Numbers 28:16 – 25. The Exodus portion starts at the killing of the first born, Moses tells the Israelites to sacrifice a lamb and use its blood on their doorpost so that when the Angel of Death comes to kill the first born of the Egyptians, he passes over the homes of the Israelites. Then the first borns are slain and Pharoah orders that all the Israelites leave, they pack their stuff, grab some unleavened bread and peace out. The part ends by saying that on this day Hashem took the Children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. The part in Numbers explains the customs of Passover.

I was in Israel these past 10 days and reading over these parts, I couldn’t help but be drawn to Exodus 12:25 “And it shall come to pass when you enter the land that the Lord will give you, as He spoke, that you shall observe this service.” This service is the passing over that saved the Israelites and allowed for the Exodus to occur as Pharoah gave up and let the peeps go. And the land that the Lord will give you refers to Israel (give or take). On Passover we must observe that Hashem saved us from Egypt (or whatever your cool, modern hagaddah says) but we must also observe and remember the fact that we were slaves in Egypt. We were strangers once, we were the lowest of the low, we were killed and discriminated against. And to me, according to this passage we must not forget that when we go to the land that has been promised to us. We must treat those in the land with us, not as the slaves we were, but as we would have wanted to be treated in Egypt.

This leads me to think about the cleaning of our homes and the intense search for chametz. We must clean out our homes of any thing that is leavened, that rises. Many Rabbi’s have attributed this cleaning to the cleaning of our souls. We must clean our souls of anything that rises, that causes us to be egotistical, to believe that we are better than others, that we have nothing

left to learn from. As we clean our homes for Pesach, we must remember that we are part of this world, that we are not any better than other human beings because Hashem saved us. In every story someone is chosen and saved. The question becomes how will we save each other today? How will we take action to free ourselves and those still bound by the shackles of capitalism, racism, materialism, war, death, famine? This is a big question but it doesn’t require us to look far. Just look at the deaths of Trayvon Martin, a 17 year old boy in Florida wrongfully killed because he was wearing a hood and was black, or Shaima Al Awadhi, who was killed in cold blood in her own home because of her religion and nationality, or the three children and professor in Toulouse who were shot for being Jewish or the numbers of Palestinians arrested and hurt in Land Day protests. These events are not disconnected from the pain we suffered in Egypt. We were freed but for what reason? Our freedom is only worth something if we do something with it. Sadly, we cannot save those who already lost their lives due to these power structures but as in the Seder we can retell our story, we can also retell theirs. We can spread awareness about the oppression of modern day “Egypt” and uniting together as the “tribes” of humanity to achieve true freedom.

What is the answer for me? Right now, it is working on my college campus to change the conversation about the conflict. But I know this is not enough and as I clean my room for Passover, search for chametz tonight, and engage in the Seders I will be thinking about the ways in which I can translate my freedom into something greater.