We are currently in the midst of the holiday of Passover – the Festival of Freedom, what I like to call the birthday of the Jewish people. There’s a lot of birth imagery in the story of the Exodus – coming forth from Egypt, also known as Mitzrayim, the narrow place, rupturing the waters of the Reed Sea, and then entering a stage of prolonged growth and some attachment issues. According to the story, we went down into Egypt with 70 souls and emerged as a nation, one with lots of issues and trauma related to slavery, but ready to grow and learn how to be a free people. As it happened, it turned out that a whole new generation was required, born free in the wilderness and not attuned to the mindset of being enslaved and considered of lesser worth. Did I mention trauma?

There’s a lot involved in being free – not just rights, but lots of responsibilities. The Torah tells us no fewer than 36 times that we are to be kind to the stranger and not oppress them – because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. This suggests that failure of empathy, such as we are seeing now in North America and many other places as governments and societies pretend that the pandemic is over, is not a new phenomenon. The fear-based “F you, I got mine” attitude that we are seeing, the refusal to see others as created in the image of the Divine and therefore as worthy of all good things as we are, is rooted in the same mentality of fear and lack that led to the creation of the Golden Calf and the decree that that generation would die in the wilderness. 

Caring about the other, the poor, the stranger, the oppressed, the immunosuppressed, the vulnerable – those are the characteristics of a truly free people.

Those who care only about their own convenience and selfish comforts may be privileged, but they are not free, as they are stunted in their growth and hide behind the walls of their fear. It takes courage and strength to stand up and mask when everyone is pretending the pandemic is over, to support racial justice and protect trans kids in places where health and dignity for all are not priorities. If we can’t march, we can donate – if we can’t donate, we can write and phone and make our voices heard, especially those of us who are privileged in this world.

During this Festival of Freedom, may we have the courage to care, and to act.