Coming Out of Egypt, Today
Elliot Vaisrub Glassenberg
Passover 2025 / 5785
“In every generation each person must see themselves as if they themselves came out of Egypt” (The Passover Haggadah, based on Mishnah Pesachim 10:5)
I grew up learning that the entire Passover seder can be summarized in one sentence: “In every generation each person must see themselves as if they themselves came out of Egypt”. I was taught that the purpose of the seder is to cultivate within us a mindset of continued mindful awareness, appreciation and gratitude of our freedom, so that we don’t take it for granted, lest we become complacent or apathetic. We mustn’t squander the freedom that we have, and we must use it ethically and wisely, and support and fight for all those – Jewish and not Jewish – who are not yet fully free.
This all made sense while growing up Jewish in North America around the turn of the 21st century, feeling that I – and the Jewish people as a whole throughout the word – was freer and safer than most of the Jewish people had been, at least in recent times, if not ever. But what about today? What do we do when it feels as though the world is closing in on us; that perhaps we are not as free as we thought – or were? How can we see ourselves as if we ourselves came out of Egypt, if it feels as if we are in “Egypt”, in one sense or another. Or as Aya Korem, the Israeli songwriter, wrote: “The nights are so dark here / I have not been able to close my eyes / Out of the fear that Egypt is still within me…”. How can we arise from the seder table and continue our lives with an “out of Egypt” mentality, when it feels like we’re living in a bad dream, a plague of darkness, caught in the depths of “Egypt”?
I find a certain comfort in knowing that I am most certainly not the first Jew to feel that way. In fact, I know that many Jews – individuals and communities – observed and even “celebrated” Passover in times and circumstances darker than I can even imagine.
In the maggid section of the Passover Haggadah, Rabbi Elazar Ben Azariah relates: “All my life I never merited to understand why the story of the exodus should be told at night, until Ben Zoma interpreted: ‘So that you may remember the day of your exodus from Egypt all the days of your life’ [Deut. 16:3] – ‘the days of your life’ would mean in the days; ‘all the days of your life’ includes the night.” I must admit, all my life I never fully understood or related to this part of the Haggadah. Isn’t it obvious that the seder should take place at night? After all, the very first seder in the Book of Exodus took place at night. So I never fully understood this passage, until this year, when Rabbi Ayala Deckel – my teacher, colleague and friend – explained it as follows. “Day” and “night” need not be read literally, but rather can be read metaphorically, as bright times and dark times. It is obvious that we can and should hold a seder in good times – when we can and should celebrate our freedom and not take it for granted. And in many ways it is easier and simpler to hold a seder in such times. But we are specifically told to remember the exodus from Egypt all the days of our life, the good and the bad, the bright and the dark. Indeed Rabbi Elazar and Ben Zoma lived in a tumultuous period, filled with both light and dark, in the shadow of the destruction of the temple and Roman rule, marked at times with great safety and security and at others with great violence and fear. A period of immense trauma, and a period of immense creativity and growth.
So how should we tell the story in dark times? What meaning, message, or purpose can we find in its telling?
First of all, there is always something to be grateful for. There is always some freedom that cannot be taken away so long as we are alive – be it the freedom to think, feel, believe or hope. As Leah Goldberg, the celebrated Israeli poet who, like many of her generation, lost many family and friends in the Shoah, once wrote: “Teach me, my God to bless and to pray… on this freedom: to see, to feel, to breathe, to know, to hope, to fail.” And especially when taking the time to reflect back at the Jewish past, there is almost always something to celebrate – even if it is only the fact that we are still here, still alive. That we came out of Egypt and that we exist. “We made it past Pharaoh; we will make it through this as well,” as the Israeli songwriter Meir Ariel famously wrote.
Secondly, there is the option to look forward. As the Haggadah continues, there is another interpretation of the verse “So that you may remember the day of your exodus from Egypt all the days of your life”. ‘The days of your life’ refers to this world, this current reality; “all the days of your life” refers to the future bringing of redemption. At the Passover seder – and perhaps always, as Jews and as human beings, we may need to hold multiple truths at the same time. We must look reality in the face and not ignore present pain; at the same time, we must look forward and hold onto hope in the possibility of a better and brighter future.
The Passover seder is more than just one moment, one feeling, one message. It is a journey, just like the exodus, with many moments and steps along the way. It includes bitterness and sweetness. Tears of sorrow and tears of hope. “Now we are slaves; next year may be free” and “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt; now we are free.” Wherever we find ourselves in our life journey, we can find ourselves in the seder. Perhaps we feel we are in Egypt, perhaps at the shore of the sea, or wandering in the desert, or at the threshold of the promised land, or already in it. But wherever we are, it is important to keep the journey moving. If we are in Egypt, we must look forward and take our first steps toward freedom. If we are in the promised land, we must look back with gratitude, and share our freedom and bounty with others. Wherever we are, we must not remain stuck, like the wheels of Pharaoh’s chariots in the Sea of Reeds. As Amnon Rivak, the Israeli rabbi and poet, once wrote: “Every person needs to have / an Egypt / and a Jerusalem / and one long journey / to always remember / in their feet.”
We must not remain stuck in trauma, in pain, in despair. We must honor our pain and our memory but we must not let it rule us, or turn us to hatred, revenge, or apathy. We must come out of Egypt. As it says “You must not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:20) and as it says “You must not despise an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land” (Deut. 23:8) – and so on and so forth. As my teacher Dov Elbaum once described it, the seder night is a sort of group therapy session; we must put all our pain, our sadness, our fear, our anger on the table – so that we can process it, and so we can heal. We must journey through the night to make our way to the day.
The Haggadah says, “In every generation each person must see themselves as if they themselves came out of Egypt”. But perhaps it is also okay to see oneself as if one is coming out of Egypt. The Exodus did not happen in one night, or in one step, but in many. This Passover, wherever we find ourselves, may we merit to take at least one step toward freedom, hope, and perchance even joy.
May it be a meaningful and happy Passover.
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Elliot Vaisrub Glassenberg is a senior educator at BINA.
