The Same Taste

The meal hasn’t even begun. The table is set, the glass still empty, and the maror sits in its place, clinging to its symbolic purpose. But the bitterness is already in my mouth.

It didn’t come from the herb.

It came from the present.

This year, maror isn’t remembrance. It’s parody.

There are days when everything feels tainted by something unnamed.

The bitterness doesn’t need to be swallowed — it’s in the air, in gestures, in the way people avoid eye contact when the word “freedom” comes up in conversation.

I grew up in Brazil, under dictatorship.

That word, which now, in Brazil, many pronounce with nostalgia — like a vintage brand of authority, refurbished by ignorance.

But I remember. Not the anthems, but the silence. The caution in speech. The tension that never made it to headlines.

And above all, how easily it all became normal.

Freedom didn’t vanish overnight. It was tamed.

Now I see it happening again, here in Israel.

Different words, different flags — same script.

Institutions rotting from within, dressed in legal language.

The press labeled as enemy. The judiciary dragged through mud.

Protesters, dehumanized.

And the public, increasingly willing to accept it all in the name of “security.”

Netanyahu doesn’t speak to the country anymore.

He speaks against it.

In February 2024, he endorsed claims that those protesting his government were “in cahoots with Hamas.” He called them “traitors” — unapologetically.

Traitors.

As if those born here, who fought for this country, who buried siblings, parents, children…

were now the threat.

At the Seder table, they’ll speak of freedom.

They’ll sing about the Exodus.

But dozens of our brothers remain captive in Gaza.

And out here, freedom is a ceremonial phrase, detached from anything real.

What, exactly, are they celebrating?

It’s easy to cling to liturgy. There’s comfort in repeating ancestral words.

But this year, I’m unmoved.

Because what I see is a people marching back to Egypt —

not led by pharaohs, but by elected men.

Not pushed by armies, but by fear.

And fear, here, is government policy.

The generation that left Egypt had to die in the desert so a new one could be born — one that didn’t carry the soul of a slave.

Now, it feels like we’re teaching the next generation that obedience is survival.

That dissent is betrayal.

That questions are dangerous.

Hannah Arendt once wrote:

“The most terrifying thing about modern dictatorships isn’t what they do to people, but what they make people believe is normal.”

And this — all of this — is already normal.

A prime minister calling his citizens traitors.

Pain weaponized for power.

Freedom sung at the table, while it decays outside the window.

Next year in Jerusalem?

This year, half of us remain captive in Gaza —

and the other half, captive in a country that’s already forgotten what it means to be free.