By Daniel Sokatch
NEW YORK — Passover is my favorite holiday.
Every year, we slow down, step back and commemorate what, in my opinion, is one of the greatest gifts the Jewish people have given to the world: the story of Exodus from Egypt, the ultimate narrative of hope, liberation, and possibility.
This story, our story, has served as an inspiration to people yearning to be free for centuries. Slaves in the American south sang spirituals about Moses and the River Jordan. The leaders of the American civil rights movement drew upon images of the Exodus to describe their struggle. It’s not for nothing that the historian Taylor Branch titled the three volumes of “America in the King Years,” his epic history of that time, “Parting the Waters,” “A Pillar of Fire,” and “At Canaan’s Edge.”
I am always particularly moved by what happens when the Israelites leave the bondage of Egypt and set out on the long road to freedom. There is something beautiful, and fleeting, in that moment — a moment in which we are neither powerless slaves, nor have we fully grasped the significance of our independence, of our power, and of our responsibility.
Passover is a celebration of divine intervention and human heroism that delivered us into freedom. It is a powerful reminder that, no matter how dark the night, liberation is possible. And it also teaches lessons, from Pharoah’s exercise of power without responsibility or humanity, to the forty years it took for the children of Israel to learn to think as a free and powerful people.
While we tell this story in every generation, it was just two generations ago that the Jewish people emerged from the Holocaust and established the State of Israel. And in this story too there was a fleeting moment between powerlessness and responsibility — a moment in which the Zionist leaders articulated in Israel’s Declaration of Independence a set of values to guide the fledgling state.
They spoke of an Israel “based on freedom, justice and peace” that “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” They asserted that Israel “will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.” They promised that Israel’s Arab residents would have “full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”
This Passover let us again remember the power — and the responsibilities — of freedom, and let us recommit to helping Israel live up to the best values of our tradition.
Chag sameach,
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Sokatch is the chief executive officer of the New Israel Fund
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