(RNS) — As Jews gather for the start of Passover and share the story of our exodus, we do more than retell our journey from persecution to freedom. The traditional text of the Haggadah read during the seder demands we see ourselves personally in the story: “that God acted for me when I left Egypt.”
Every part of the service compels us to connect with the narrative of forcible displacement. The rituals recreate the tears and bitterness of the slavery we left. So do the commandments that emerge from this story.
Jewish tradition consistently demands that because we were strangers in the land of Egypt, we must remember the stranger, love the stranger, welcome the stranger and not oppress the stranger. We are commanded to extend our circle of moral obligation beyond our own. Author Yossi Klein Halevi encapsulates Passover with the simple message, “Don’t be cruel.”
I serve as the rabbi-in-residence for HIAS, the Jewish organization that serves people of all backgrounds who endure the tears and bitterness of forced displacement today. Every year, we put out a Haggadah and new resources for Passover connecting the ancient story of the Jewish exodus to the contemporary stories that mirror that same journey from oppression to safety.
The connections between HIAS’ work and the subject of the holiday are obvious. But in preparation for this year’s Passover, the Haggadah struck me differently. Its emphatic obsession with the need for personal connection to the story felt less like a moral lesson and more like a bubbling anxiety. What happens if we grow too distant from the narrative? What does that do to us? To our values? To our culture?
The Haggadah’s fixation on our intimate knowledge of oppression sounds like a warning not to take the values of a society for granted. Cultural norms are not stagnant and can quickly shift. Just how broadly we apply the idea that we are our brother’s keeper shifts with cultural and historical trends, and society’s sense of how far its circles of moral obligation extend fluctuates.
A Passover seder illustration on the HIAS website. (Courtesy image)
These trajectories create powerful feedback loops. Expansion begets expansion, but it can take years to build a culture centered on human dignity. The opposite is true as well. Contraction begets contraction, though the downward spiral can happen much quicker. It is easier, after all, to tear something down than build it up.
As we prepare our seder tables this year, we do so in a moment of increasing global tribalism and contracting circles of moral obligation. Just a few years ago, a commitment to the dignity of people fleeing danger was the global norm, albeit imperfect in its implementation. Today, governments are walking back and wiggling out of previous commitments to migrants, asylum seekers and those fleeing war.
In the United States, we are witnessing the cancellation of the refugee admissions program — a functional end of the ability to seek asylum at our borders, the collapse of foreign humanitarian aid, the removal of status for many populations in the U.S. temporarily and growing threats of mass deportations.
While the current U.S. administration appears quite vocal and proud of these transformations, many other countries are mirroring these behaviors more quietly. In this global feedback loop of contracting moral obligation, many people on the margins of society will be rendered disposable.
HIAS Haggadah cover. (Illustration and design by Hillel Smith)
It seems the holiday of Passover and the text of the Haggadah were prepared for this moment — perhaps better than most people who embrace its message. We took for granted the strength of these foundational cultural values. As it turned out, they were less foundational than we had assumed.
This shift has caused many of us a profound spiritual disorientation — a kind of moral vertigo where we find ourselves in search of stable ground. Maintaining one’s own moral compass in the face of a society that is succumbing to cruelty is no easy task. Facing a world that does not embrace your most fundamental values requires a different kind of spiritual strength and resilience. As the news gets bleaker, an impulse toward empathy can feel lonely.
Perhaps it is this disorientation that caused the Haggadah to speak so differently to me this year. As we come to our seder tables in the coming days, I am hopeful that the moral clarity of our tradition will remind us that a world with more cruelty demands even more that we not be.
May this Passover recalibrate our moral compasses to remember the stranger, not oppress the stranger, and love the stranger. And may it help us gain the fortitude to rebuild our culture to welcome the stranger.
(Rabbi Sarah Bassin is the rabbi-in-residence at HIAS. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)
