Passover 2025!
Pesach — the holiday on the Jewish calendar that wrestles most directly with questions of oppression and liberation — felt timelier than ever this year. The world around us feels broken beyond repair and hurtling toward something even crueler. In our small ZA world, we’re dealing with destabilizing changes in the national funding ecosystem, sick and hurting loved ones, and grief and uncertainty about the political moment we’re in. What does it look like to respond to this moment with courage and love?
I’m not sure that our Seders gave us any new answers, but at least we got to come together and ask some of the right questions. On Friday, we scattered to many different places: Margalit to spend the holiday with family in Boston, Patricia to DC to spend time with old friends, Gavi home to their family, Acacia and I to attend a Seder at Sophie’s apartment in Chicago, and Eric holding it down at the farm.
At Saturday’s Seder at Sophie’s (wow - say that five times fast), Anya from last fall’s cohort joined us and brought a friend, and the five of us had a gloriously silly Seder — complete with a Dungeons and Dragons-themed table setting and a theatrical reenactment of the Exodus story in improvisational dance form. We used the Heartland Haggadah put together by ZA’s spring 2024 cohort (thank you, friends! It was such a beautiful resource for us to use), and feasted on charoset, matzo ball soup, a vegan moussaka that took Sophie and I most of the day to assemble (reviews were mixed… was not quite the showstopper we were envisioning), tzimmes, and homemade berry ice cream.
More of us were reunited at the farmhouse for Sunday’s Seder. We went through the Heartland Haggadah again, sang Hallelujah and Your Heart Knows the Way Home and Chad Gadya, and feasted on freshly foraged ramps. Lexi hid the afikomen and then promptly fell asleep in the living room, making our search nearly impossible. We gave up quickly, promptly forgot about it, and I’m realizing as I write that the afikomen is STILL HIDDEN — which I think means that our Seder has never technically ended? Kind of cool?
One piece of the Seder that moved me most was a listing of the 10 spiritual plagues that prevent us from standing up against oppression:
loss of foundational connection to truth
loss of ability to trust our dreams
loss of perspective
loss of allies
loss of humanity
loss of hope
loss of empathy
loss of clarity
loss of wonder
soul loss
Have you lost these things? How can we find them, together?
Another offering that’s sticking with me is an excerpt from an essay Gavi read to us about how the Jewish liberation from Egypt was never only for the Jews:
The Exodus was never an only-Israelite story.
For starters, liberation never, ever could have happened without the actions of at least one non-Jew. Pharoah's daughter– known by the tradition as Batya, the daughter of God, risks her own privilege and safety to interrupt injustice in the ways that she can and, critically, saves the infant Moses' life. As far as we know, there would be no Exodus without her. (It's also possible that the system-disrupting midwives Shifra and Puah weren't Israelite– we don't know.)
And then there's Exodus 12:38. It's go time, the moment to flee slavery and– “also a mixed multitude went up with them….” Erev rav, in the Hebrew. Rashi (the 11th c. French commentator) tells us that this was a "mixture of nations made up of strangers/sojourners," and Ibn Ezra (12th c. Spain) says it was explicitly Egyptians; the Late Antique/early Medieval Targum Yonatan says that it was "a multitude of strangers, two hundred and forty 'ten thousands' [myriads]" (That would be 2.4 million, yep). Samuel David Luzzatto (19th c. Italy) suggests that the mixed multitude is comprised of Egyptians who intermarried with Israelites. The Zohar (13th c. Spain) suggests that it's specifically Egyptian sorcerers and magicians who were dazzled by God's miraculous power.
Whoever they were, they weren't Israelites, but they, too, were part of the Exodus. They, too, were brought out of Egypt by God's plagues, by God's [metaphoric] mighty hand and [allegorical] outstretched arm, by all these signs and portents.
It was never "just us.”
Our liberation has always been collective, it's always transcended border and boundary and the narrow place of identity. Our freedom has always included more than just us, it's always depended on more than just us, and it's always been about who else comes with us.
Can you imagine it? The Israelites are in the late stages of the plagues, beginning to get ready to go, to take reparations for their enslavement, and their non-Israelite neighbors say, Hey– you think it's really gonna happen this time? Can I come, too?
Of course the answer is yes. Of course the answer is: As many people free as possible. Of course the answer is: Yes, let's keep you safe. Of course the answer is, absolutely there is room for you, there is food for you, there is a place for you– we are all running, we are all refugees, and we are operating with an abundance mindset, we are leaning into these relationships of care and connection.
And who knows how it happened? Maybe the Israelites went to the Egyptians or other non-Israelites with whom they had longstanding bonds to say: Hey, looks like we're getting out, for real– you joining us? for all the same reasons.
For all the same reasons.”
(you can read the full essay here)
One thing I feel sure about — in this moment and always, our safety is in community. Our safety is in standing together and refusing to be divided, in building a mass movement that defends those who are being targeted first, in emboldening each other to speak out and take risks in defense of what is right.
Sending love and strength to you all,
CEP