Tonight marks the start of the Jewish festival of Passover, when we Jews remember the great miracle that we believe the Eternal One undertook to rescue the people Israel from the enslavement of a cruel Egyptian Pharoah. Scripture states that the Eternal One sent ten plagues to the Egyptians, each increasing in severity, in order to get the Pharoah to change his mind and let the Israelites, led by Moses, go free.
Eventually Pharoah cracked after the most terrible of the plagues, the death of all Egypt’s firstborn, and let the Israelites go free. But, as tyrants are wont to do, later he went back on his word and led an army towards the Sea of Reeds, hoping to trap the Israelites against the sea, which would have made it easy for Pharoah to kill or recapture his uppity former slaves.
However, on this day evil and bloodlust did not win. The Eternal One, according to the Bible, parted the waters of the Sea of Reeds allowing the Israelites to escape, with the waters returning only when Pharoah’s army tried to follow the path carved out for the Israelites. The Israelites escaped and the army of the oppressor was drowned. Tonight I will sit down at my Passover Seder table and tell again, with my wife, my son and our guests, the story of the journey of Israelites from slavery to freedom. I will celebrate that freedom but also mourn for the deaths of the Egyptians who although they died serving a tyrant, were still nevertheless also creations of the Eternal One. Just as a match is consumed when is struck to light a candle or a fire, so the Egyptians were consumed, giving birth, not just to freedom of the Israelites, but also to the whole idea and concept of freedom.
‘Let my people’ go, a sentiment attributed to Moses, has been a rallying cry for American Civil Rights activists in the 20th century for example and has been used by others who stand up against tyranny. It is being used again today by those who are standing up for the rights of nations to be secure behind their own borders and by those trying to stem the growing restrictions in Western nations on rights such as freedom of speech.
One thing that I have found both highly interesting and amusing is that one of the plagues sent to Pharoah and the Egyptians was of frogs. The last few years have seen those modern pharoahs of politics, media and administration find themselves also plagued with frogs, or rather the image of one particular frog called Pepe. The Pepe image is often wielded by people angry at being lied to by their media and treated like dirt by the politicians. These people fighting for the right to speak freely are also those who are saying, just as Moses did, ‘let my people go free.’ Therefore I think it highly appropriate that those who would enslave us and silence us are being inundated by frogs.
I’d like to conclude by wishing all my Jewish readers who celebrate Passover a very happy and kosher Pesach. Because of Passover I will be taking a break from writing from sunset this evening and I’ll see everyone after Yom Tov (festival period) ends on Sunday night, when my religious rules permit me to write again.
Happy Passover
Next year in Jerusalem
Next year in freedom for us all
