I want to make a little more of Passover this year. It’s not that I’m religious—apart from some traditional foods and last night’s dinner, the only vestige of religious observance I perform is one annual fast for quite personal reasons—just that the story strikes me as immensely powerful and eternally relevant. I don’t observe the usual Jewish custom of going without leavened bread for 8 days, but I do like the idea of having some mindfulness of the occasion for longer than just one evening. So this year I’m going to try and write something about the Passover story and why I find it so compelling for each day of the festival.
The broad messages are “we were slaves and now we are free”, and the mission of making that statement as universally true as possible, which it certainly isn’t today. But there are many other themes worth paying attention to. The first is at the very outset. At the end of Genesis, the Israelites are doing very well in Egypt, having been handsomely rewarded for Joseph’s good counsel to the Pharaoh, and the brothers having all reconciled. There’s an unspecified gap in which some generations pass and the Israelites continue to thrive, until very abruptly:
Exodus I:8-11 “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people: ‘Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us; come, let us deal craftily with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there befalleth us any war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the land.’ Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens.”
