A Seder for a Shattered People

People may cite this as the pivotal point in the Exodus story. It was when God appeared to Moses in a burning bush and charged him with leading the effort to bring down the Egyptian empire and to free the Jews. But within this episode, the thing that awoke my realization that we were witnessing a mighty upheaval of events was this simple exchange. Moses: “When the Jews ask me your name, what shall I tell them?” God: “I Will Be What I Will Be; tell them ‘I Will Be’ sent you.”

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg noted this, the story of how Jewish slaves in Egypt became the Jewish People in Israel was the first time in recorded history that the fate of a people was altered. The world suddenly saw that history is not destiny. It seems to me that this is reflected in the name that God donned at that moment. The Jewish story was about to change, and whatever kind of God that the Jews would need to be by their side as their world was violently overturned, that is the God who would be there with them.

Like you, I am on the receiving end of many well-meaning Passover messages expressing wishes for reconciliation, kindness, peace. My drafting such words makes me feel a little bit fake because, like you, I also know that our world is so tattered that such wishes need to be more than sincere; they need to be magical.

Sadly, our Jewish community is broken, and I do not refer only to the grief we continue to experience with Israel at war. I mean that we are broken into pieces. I mean that the connections that we do enjoy are fragile. The thing that most unites us are the people who hate us, rather than the things that we love. A community whose organizing principle is to rally for the common defense is unsustainable and the environment it produces is poisonous.

And so, I have Four Questions. When we sit at the seder, will we really need Maror to taste bitterness? Is this 1/60^th of what it feels like to have been a slave? The forces pressing upon us seem so powerful, so intractable, so pernicious; can singing songs, telling stories, drinking wine, and dreaming dreams move us closer to a better place, or are we merely escaping for the moment? Are we pouring our reservoir of hope into a leaky bucket, only for it to drain out before Chad Gadya?

Some people are resigned to say, “It is what it is.” But God says, “I Will Be What I Will Be. Things will change, and no matter how things change, I Will Be with you.”

This year, the seder is not only an intense re-experiencing of what was. It is a promise of what will be. Of what we will be. Of what our world can become. That vision is beyond our grasp, but it is within our sight. We know well that it is not up to us to complete the task. But as we sit around our seder table and tell the story of our redemption, as we appreciate that we have been here before, we will come to realize that we who brought the revolution of redemption to the world can once again seize that power for ourselves.