Maggid: Telling the Passover Story
Long ago, on a night like this one, on the first full moon of Spring, a people set out on a journey from bondage to liberation. They were an oppressed people who had taken refuge in a foreign land who had been enslaved gradually by rulers that had come to despise them. They had been dehumanized, oppressed, and treated as Other. But they had found the strength to throw off the shackles of bondage and to rebel against this oppression. They had allies in this struggle who, though part of the privileged elite, nevertheless challenged the power structure from which they benefited. And they had doubters from within--those who had internalized their own slavery to such an extent that they could not imagine alternatives.
The story of this long-ago people is our own story. We are commanded to re-tell it each year not only because it is part of our history but because it is relevant to our lives today. Tonight we come together at this (insert during global pandemics: virtual) table to speak of the struggle of those seeking refuge who find themselves rounded up in concentration camps; of those seeking self-determination who find themselves living under occupation; of those seeking to celebrate their own identity in the face of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of oppression. We come here tonight to tell this story of liberation so that we may each liberate ourselves and displace the power structures that enslave Others.
Our Hasidic masters pointed out that the Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, can also be understood as “the narrow place of consciousness.” To be a slave is to only see the small picture placed in front of you by the powerful. The liberation struggle we celebrate tonight is not a one time event from the past, but rather is a process that must continue from generation to generation.
Freedom and slavery, liberation and oppression, are both always present and always possible.
We arrive at the Passover table breathless, with the salty taste of authoritarian racism ripe on our tongues.
We arrive at the Passover table full of awe, with the rise of grassroots popular movements insisting on connection across borders and walls.
We arrive strong and grateful for one another; for our ever-growing movement for justice and liberation.
In the words of the poet and activist, Aurora Levins Morales:
THIS TIME WE CANNOT CROSS UNTIL WE CARRY EACH OTHER. ALL OF US REFUGEES, ALL OF US PROPHETS. NO MORE TAKING TURNS ON HISTORY’S WHEEL, TRYING TO COLLECT OLD DEBTS NO ONE CAN PAY. THE SEA WILL NOT OPEN THAT WAY. THIS TIME THAT COUNTRY IS WHAT WE PROMISE EACH OTHER, OUR RAGE PRESSED CHEEK TO CHEEK UNTIL TEARS FLOOD THE SPACE BETWEEN, UNTIL THERE ARE NO ENEMIES LEFT, BECAUSE THIS TIME NO ONE WILL BE LEFT TO DROWN AND ALL OF US MUST BE CHOSEN. THIS TIME IT’S ALL OF US OR NONE.
This year we dedicate our seders to all of us, to our insistence on intersectionality, from gentrification to colonization; we are organizing to disrupt the root causes of displacement and violence at home and abroad.
May you find moments in this seder to exhale, to lean your head on the shoulder of a friend or comrade, to feel yourself arriving on the shores of liberation.
May you find moments of fierce righteous rage that motivate you to re-commit to local and national organizing.
And may you find moments to carry one another across, your pain and your losses, your visions and your victories, because this time it’s all of us or none.
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