Passover: Dissatisfaction and Redemption

When did the Israelite redemption from slavery in Egypt begin?

According to the rabbis, it began when the Israelites themselves finally became angry and impatient with their slavery. A prominent scholar, the Belzer Rebbe, said that the worst consequence of slavery was that they got used to it. However, once the Israelites began to feel their own pain and appreciate their own worth, they cried out for redemption.

This is one reason that on Passover we read the Song of Songs, which is a love story. Passover itself is a kind of love story — a deep connection both between Israel and God and among the Israelites themselves that led to their rescue. We must extend this connection to others, to a larger circle: we must see them and care for them.

In other words, the Exodus began in frustration — former Israeli Prime Minister and President Shimon Peres once said that the great Jewish gift to the world was “dissatisfaction” — and ended in love. Thus, we read each year that the story of the Passover Seder begins in degradation and ends in glory.

As we pray every day for the hostages, we are dissatisfied — more, we are angry and grieved — at the cruelty and suffering that characterizes so much of our world. But our motivation is not primarily a negative one — it is borne out of love for those who suffer. We will gather around the Seder table with those close to us and hold up the matzah, which represents affliction; we will speak the Seder’s final words that point to Jerusalem, which represents redemption. We are caught between the two — the anguish of the world as it is and the enchantment of our vision of what the world can be.

Each of us is charged to bring these two closer together.

We vow it at the Passover Seder: “This year we are slaves, may next year we be free.” We pledge ourselves, in this year of confusion and conflict, to help save those in captivity, bind up our society’s wounds and repair God’s broken world.

Sincerely,

Rabbi David Wolpe

Rabbinic Fellow

ADL