Rabbi’s Blog

It is strange to be celebrating Passover and liberation from bondage when so many of us are stuck in our homes due to a plague. As I saw on Facebook recently:

Jewish Irony: Passover Cancelled Due to PLAGUE

But let’s also remember that on the night of the first Passover, all the Israelites were stuck in their houses as well. So like our ancestors, we are staying in our homes to retell the story of our going from slavery to freedom and to remind ourselves that in this time when we are all focused so much on the epidemic, the issues of freedom haven’t gone away – they have grown. Around the world, people are still in bondage and slavery, and the issues of poverty, food insecurity, refugees and climate change now have the added threat of Covid-19. It will be hard not to be with our friends and family around the Seder table, but now more than ever, we need to remind ourselves of the values – and challenges – of freedom, and our responsibility as Jews to make sure freedom rings out over the voices of those who call for a Pharoah to save us. We call to God, and the divine spark within each of us that knows that freedom is the oxygen the spirit needs to breathe, and that all of us made in the image of the Divine deserve to be free.

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