(I've been away this week, so unable to compose a new post, but this one from several years ago is appropriate.)
Tonight is the first night of Passover, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 also began on Passover.
"Central to the Pesach seder is the recounting of the ten plagues. As moderns educated in natural science, the story strikes us as childish, as primitive, as mythological. Yet we may be missing the point of these extraordinary events if we understand it as an ancient superstition. Instead the miracle is a symbol of the spontaneity in history, a faith in the changeability of oppressive regimes. What appears as a historical necessity, a small people subject to a great empire, is revealed as an illusion. God's miraculous intervention in Egypt presents history as an open-textured drama. There is an unpredictable Power present in the universe, the God of surprise.
"Belief in miracle is the basis of the "hope model" of Judaism. Exodus becomes a call to revolutionary hope regardless of the conditions of history. Out of this memory of redemption, they can defy the given conditions. The act of protest against their environment can occur because the Jews possess a memory of the impossible that became possible. The order that people observe in the cosmos and in history, is not irreversible. Tomorrow will not necessarily be like today."
So we repeat:
"In every generation one is obligated to see oneself as one who personally went out from Egypt. Just as it says, 'You shall tell your child on that very day, It's because of this that God did for me when I went out from Egypt.' " (Exodus 13:8)
Passover Seder Symbols Song
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
