We Are Not Free

The seders are over.
The wine has dried.
The songs have ended.

And still
they are there.

We said the words.
We told the story.
We lifted our cups and declared, “We were slaves, and now we are free.”

We lied.

Fifty-eight souls still in Gaza.
Yet still, we dare to speak of freedom.

We are not free.

Edan is still in Gaza.
So is Almog.
So is Omer.
So are dozens more.

While their breath is uncertain and their fate unbearable,
we shop for flowers, debate brisket recipes, and post polished seder spreads.

We fill our calendars with plans,
our inboxes with distractions.
We speak of progress and policy,
we move forward 

yet somehow, in all the noise,
their names have grown quieter.

That silence is our second Egypt.

Last year, in a dark room in Gaza,
Agam Berger and Liri Albag made a seder out of napkins.
They wrote a Haggadah by hand.
They ate corn flour pitas and called it matzah.
They whispered the story of freedom while still imprisoned.

Agam came home. So did Liri.
Yet the shadows of captivity haven’t left them.
They still carry the tunnels with them
the silence, the hunger, the weight of those who didn’t come back.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin, who buried her son Hersh,
asks what no one has been able to answer:

Why are they still there?

The answers we offer, none of them are good enough.

The Red Cross had to be begged to deliver matzah.
Not comfort.
Not medicine.
Just matzah.

so a Jew in a cage could whisper,
“I remember who I am.”

We don’t even know if it made it.

The seder was never meant to be still.
It was forged in the aftermath.
When the Temple lay in ash
and lambs could no longer be brought.

Our sages gathered what remained
a table, a question, a story
and made it sacred.

They borrowed the forms of empire:
four cups, reclining, salted greens
and rewrote them.

A Roman feast became a declaration of faith.
A Greek symposium became a night of survival.
Memory became law.
Ritual became our resistance.

This is who we are.
We do not inherit the seder.
We rebuild it.
Every year.
Every exile.
Every heartbreak.

We, of all people,
do not get to go silent now.

We dipped for ten plagues.
We lived them.
Blood. Fire. Darkness. Death.

Not in Egypt
but in Be’eri, in Re’im, in Kfar Aza.

Baby Kfir, who will never grow up.
Murdered at ten months.
Before he could speak, let alone ask, why?

He will never sit at a seder.
Never hear his older brother Ariel ask:
“Mah nishtana ha’laila ha’zeh?”
Or hear their father Yarden answer.

As we dipped the parsley in saltwater,
the tears of slavery met the tears of captivity.

We sang of freedom
while they remained in bondage.

Tapping rhythms on their skin
to remember what music felt like,
to remind themselves they are still alive.
Still whispering Shema in the dark.
Still waiting for our voice
to be loud enough.

Am Yisrael, united, unignorable 
that even Pharaoh would have to let them go.

We sang Dayenu.
We said it would have been enough.

But some are still in darkness,
still waiting to be counted in the story.

Maybe this year, Dayenu isn’t something we sing.
Maybe it’s something we do.

We read of the Four Sons:
the wise, the wicked, the simple, the silent.

This year, they weren’t in the Haggadah.
They were in the mirror.

We were wise in our ritual,
wicked in our silence,
simple in our comforts,
too numb to ask the questions that matter.

Perhaps that’s the point.

We hear sermons about strength.
We read essays about resilience.

Some of those same leaders trade truth for control.
“Unity,” they call it.

As if moral clarity is a luxury we can no longer afford.

The Haggadah commands:
“At p’tach lo.”
You must open it for him.

Open the words.
Open the memory.
Open the gates of heaven with your voice.

We must speak for those who cannot.
We must weep for those who are unseen.
We must act for those still bound in Egypt’s shadow.

Because until they return
until every last one walks free

we remain a people in exile.
Not from land,
but from ourselves.

This is our covenant.
About soul.
About standing at Sinai together and refusing to leave anyone behind.

Until they are home
we are not redeemed.
We are not finished.
We are not whole.

We are not free.