This Monday night Jews around the world will sit down at their tables and embark on recreating the narrative of the Exodus through the rituals of the seder. We will immerse ourselves in the story from some 3,000 years ago that forged the Jewish people. We will eat matzah and bitter herbs to taste as our ancestors tasted. We will drink four cups of wine to symbolize the four stages of redemption that transpired during the Egyptian experience. However, this night does not belong to the Exodus alone.
If we do not allow the seder to inspire and move us to greater action we will have missed a key component on what the whole evening is all about. The Exodus becomes a central relational context for our connection to God: “I am the Lord, your God, who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage (Exodus 20:2).” It is used four separate times to introduce major components of Biblical legislation (Exodus 23:20, 23:9, Leviticus 19:34 and Deuteronomy 10:19). It is the framing by which future generations come to know their history and their people: “You shall say to your child, ‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt…’ (Deuteronomy 6:21).” Simply, the Exodus is the hinge by which the entire covenantal experience rests.
The Exodus is not just a story to be told. It is an imperative to be acted upon.
What is that imperative? At it’s most basic level the Exodus compels us to liberate, to free and to make better the lives of those most impacted by persecution and oppression. To “know the spirit of the stranger” as the Bible reminds us multiple times is to empathize directly with the marginalized, the outliers and the ones on the margins. In that spirit the organization I work for, The Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, has recently published an insert for your Haggadah that makes relevant the work of Passover into a concrete issue people living in Illinois face today. This is precisely the type of work Passover and the Exodus story calls us to. I encourage you to download the insert and even if the issue is not applicable for you, make it an impetus for the type of investigative work necessary that transforms the Exodus from simply a story into an imperative.
