4 | MAY 2 • 2024
J
N
PURELY COMMENTARY
F
or many Jews around
the world sitting down
at their tables last week
to celebrate Passover — and
there were indeed many, as
the Passover seder is the most
commonly observed Jewish
ritual according to surveys of
American and
Israeli Jews —
celebrating was
harder than at
any Passover in
their lifetime.
It seems like a
mockery of the
holiday com-
memorating Jewish freedom
from enslavement in Egypt
to have 133 Jewish hostages
enslaved by a terrorist group
in Gaza, with their prospects
for salvation growing dimmer
by the day. Jews recounted the
miracles performed for their
ancestors against their oppres-
sors in the shadow of the
worst massacre of Jews since
the Holocaust and barely one
week after the largest missile
and drone barrage in history
came hurtling toward Israel
from Iran.
The Passover Haggadah
read during the seder exhort-
ed Jews to experience free-
dom by imagining that they
actually left Egypt themselves,
while many American Jews
for the first time in their lives
wondered if the burgeoning
antisemitism around them will
one day require them to leave
in a new exodus. For some,
the ritual of dipping a finger
into wine and spilling it out
during the recitation of the 10
plagues in order to acknowl-
edge the Egyptian blood
that was spilled during the
Israelites’ liberation was pow-
erfully symbolic of Palestinian
blood that has been spilled
during Israel’s military opera-
tion in Gaza.
Drawing parallels between
the Passover story and today’s
world has never been easier,
and has never been so dis-
heartening. But for all of the
obvious dark parallels and
warnings that were read into
Passover this year, there are
ways to draw from the story
of the Israelites leaving Egypt
that provide some hope for
the specific challenges facing
Israel and Jews today.
The old joke about Jewish
holidays is that they all follow
the same pattern: they tried
to kill us, they failed, let’s eat.
What is distinctive about the
Passover story is that there
is little room in it for Jewish
agency. Unlike Chanukah and
its band of Jewish Hasmonean
rebels overthrowing the
Seleucid oppressors and rees-
tablishing Jewish sovereign-
ty in the Land of Israel, or
Purim with its Jewish heroes
Esther and Mordechai using
their wit to turn the tables
on Haman and his genocidal
scheme, the Passover story is
entirely about God. It is God
who brings the plagues on
Egypt, God who instructs the
Israelites precisely when they
should leave, God who splits
the Sea of Reeds.
While Moses looms large in
the biblical narrative as God’s
messenger in instigating the
plagues, speaking to Pharaoh
and rallying the Israelites, he
is so ancillary to the story
recounted on Passover night
that his name does not appear
once in the entire Haggadah.
The exodus itself was a
whirlwind for the Israelites
as they were being told what
to do and where to go. One
of the themes of the story is
haste, which leads to the most
well-known part of Passover
observance, namely refraining
from leavened products and
eating unleavened matzah to
commemorate the Israelites
leaving so quickly that their
bread had no time to rise.
The Israelites were explicitly
instructed to eat the original
Paschal lamb hurriedly and
with all of their things ready
to go, and were expelled by
the Egyptians the very next
day without a fight.
Pharaoh immediately
changed his mind and pur-
sued them with his entire
army, so that only days after
leaving Egypt, the Israelites
opinion
Passover’s Prescription
for Practicing Patience
Michael J.
Koplow
PURELY COMMENTARY
A rally to bring
home the 133
Israelis who
are being held
hostage in Gaza