Recovering
ZECHER LITZIYAT MITZRAYIM
1. REMEMBERING THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT
To frame your Seder experience, read some or all of this just before Kiddush (p14).
TONIGHT, WE relive the story of our ancestors’ Exodus from Egypt. This narrative is the ultimate expression of divine power and national redemption. It is the paradigm for recalling our origins and how God saved us. It has given hope to generations of Jews caught in desperate suffering.
Tonight, we will apply its lessons to our current situation, the global pandemic, in order to learn how we too can recover from tragedy and forge a hopeful future.
How do we move from despair to hope? How do we respectfully remember those who have died and yet focus on those who are living? How can we contain our anxiety and find ways to be positive?
One Jewish way is the Pesach Seder. In the Kiddush, we refer to zecher litziyat Mitzrayim, “remembering the Exodus from Egypt”. Reliving and re-examining that story can give us immense strength and purpose.
Though the salvation of the Israelites is our story, God also saved other ancient peoples in the Bible. As the prophet Amos wrote, “Says the Lord: Did I not bring Israel out of the land of Egypt? And the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Arameans from Kir?” (Amos 9:7).
The Exodus has universal appeal for people suffering from oppression and in need of tools for memory and recovery. Go Down, Moses is an African-American spiritual folk song created by the southern slave community prior to the Civil War. “Go down Moses, way down in Egypt’s land, tell old Pharaoh, to let my people go!” It was also sung by abolitionists to signal escape and rebellion. In his speeches, Dr Martin Luther King often evoked the Exodus story to inspire the civil rights movement in the fight for racial justice.
And so tonight, we will reinterpret parts of the Haggadah to teach us the power of recovery. Rabbi Sacks wrote, “When I first became Chief Rabbi I had to undergo a medical examination. The doctor had me walking at a very brisk pace on a treadmill. ‘What are you testing?’ I asked him. ‘How fast I can go, or how long?’ ‘Neither,’ he replied. ‘I will be observing how long it takes for your pulse to return to normal, after you come off the treadmill.’ That is when I discovered that health is measured by the power of recovery.”
Now let us begin the journey.