Spring is blooming all around us. Pesach cleaning and preparation were completed. The air seemed suffused with a sense of readiness and renewal for the upcoming Pesach holiday.
And yet.
A sense of heaviness could be felt alongside it.
It’s hard to describe sitting down in your holiday finest to a lovely seder table you worked hard for, to transform the evening into a psychological state of mind of finally leaving Egypt, of finally leaving the slavery behind, of leaving the suffering, leaving the cruel decrees, against your people, into the expansiveness of freedom, when at that very moment, your fellow Jews are in fact still in their slavery, their suffering, their Egypt — their experience, only different by name, time and place.
Today, it is kidnapping by Hamas and in the dungeon tunnels of Gaza, instead of in Egypt.
The Haggadah discussion no longer seems theoretical about concepts of bondage and freedom, but rather, quite literal, about bondage and freedom in our own time.
Only one year ago, young women Agam Berger and Liri Albag, remarkably, celebrated a seder in captivity. Their matzah, a dried out pita, a true bread of affliction.
Stories — and even a famous picture of concentration camp inmates in the Holocaust risking their lives to bake matzahs for Pesach — have always been deeply moving, as well as catalyzing us to redouble our efforts and dedication to holiday preparation and celebration as we bask in the privilege of freedom.
Now, added to the legacy of those Holocaust stories and images are the images and stories of the freed hostages.
And, unbearably, of the hostages, still in captivity.
There is the theory desensitization surrounding the vast, incomprehensible number of six million. Focus on the story of one family, one individual, to convey the pain and horror of the Holocaust, was a theory I encountered in college.
For us, in our communities, the many survivors and their individual stories we so intimately know — harrowing stories — from our own grandparents. Our friend’s grandparents. Our aunts and uncles. Our chazzan. Our dear friend. Our neighbor. Our fellow shul goer. Our grocer.
While the Pesach story of the Haggadah and the Exodus is the national story of freedom of ‘The Jewish people, there is also one family at its center whose names we know with whom we feel a connection: the siblings Moses, Aaron, Miriam. And their parents Amram and Yocheved.
We follow their family through their struggles. From Moses’ survival story against all odds in the very death waters that swallowed the male Jewish babies whom had decreed must be drowned, Moses’ miraculous survival assisted by Batya and the tender protection of his older sister, Miriam, guarding him from afar. Their elder brother Aaron’s unconditional, boundless love and support.
The commentaries fill out this family’s story in very emotionally intimate ways, down to conversations of among them as they contend with coping and confronting the horror and dread of Pharaoh’s evil decrees for eradicating the Hebrew people from the face of the earth.
Right now, in our current agonizing saga of the war in Gaza, of the hostages, they are not people distant in time who we know nothing about.
We know not just one family, as in the story of the Exodus, but many families.
We know the hostages’ names. Their faces. Their families.
It feels personal.
Throughout my life, each year as we reach the spot in the Haggadah that says, “B’chol dor v’dor, in every generation, every person is obligated to see himself as though he himself went out of Egypt,” my father would highlight Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik’s view that this sentiment are the essence of the Haggadah story, and of the seder night experience.
It’s a leap in time and frame of mind to internalize and dig deep in identifying with the struggle and pain of the slaves, and then the jubilation and ecstasy of their release — their Exodus journey.
This year — and last — in my mind, I couldn’t help but substitute the word Hamas or Gaza for the word Egypt.
Beyond that, though, it seems it is our generation’s duty also to shift our state of mind from celebrating and identifying with freedom, to layering our current state of affairs onto those ancient words.
Instead of seeing ourselves as having been released from Egypt or Hamas or Gaza, it is our generation’s duty to see ourselves as though we are still right there in bondage with the hostages. The inverse of the sentiment must be the charge.
Each of us must see ourselves as though we still remain in the captivity of Hamas.
As though we are still in the dungeon tunnels, as though we are still starving with barely a pita bread a day to eat, as though we are still contending with wounds untreated, as though we are psychically tortured, as though we are scared for life.
As though we are still in bondage.
With unbearable torture.
And zero freedom.
“K’eelu,” as though.
Wrenchingly, our “k’eelu” is their very reality — the fate of the remaining 59 hostages.
So to see ourselves in their shoes, that is the psychological leap we must all make right now — mentally. But also in action, so as to ensure their release.
In our lifetime, we have layered the pain of the Holocaust narrative onto the stories of bondage and freedom centering around Pesach.
Today, we connect with the heroic Israeli soldiers fighting a long war of survival, and we connect with the bereaved families of fallen soldiers. Ultimately, in the context of Pesach, we connect with the bondage of those hostages still left behind, alongside the inspiration of the hostages who have thus far been released, who share their unbelievable their personal exodus journeys.
May we soon be able to re-phrase the sentiment behind the words of “b’chol dor v’dor . . . ” — the sentence personal release as spoken in the past tense — to release from the bondage of Hamas, spoken in the present tense.
A sentiment of the living hostages’ release and survival.
A return to identifying solely with the birth of our national story as we experienced the exodus from Egypt.
Our Pesach story started with the family of Amram and Yocheved and their three children.
Our story continues to this day with the names of the 59 hostages we still await.
© IJN 2025
