Every year around this time things start to look a bit different. The days get longer, the sun gets a bit stronger and everywhere you go you can experience the sights, sounds, and smells of spring. Spring is a time of rebirth. This year we had one of the coldest months on record in February, and now we see nature waking up and stretching its legs. The flowers and plants start to bloom and show off their beautiful colors.
In a couple of weeks or so (depending on when you read this) we will ritualize our celebration of spring in our own Jewish way. Just as spring is a story of rebirth, so too Passover tells us a story of a people who were reborn as free men and women. It was not always an easy journey. Yes, there were enemy tribes who attempted to pursue the Israelites and yes, there were times when water or other natural resources were scarce, but those were not the biggest obstacles to the bnei yisrael (Children of Israel, or Israelites) as they journeyed from their bondage in Egypt to the freedom of the Promised Land.
Time after time we see instances in which Bnei Yisrael destroys the possibility of “happily ever after” we see them resist and thrash around as God tries to lead them to the Promised Land. Every time they came up against adversity, B’Y would call out to Moshe and long for the days of Egypt. When Bnei Yisrael is being pursued by the Egyptians at the Red Sea, the people cry out to Moshe and say, “where there not enough graves in Egypt?”
Later in their crossing, in the book of Numbers, Bamidbar, we are given an insight into exactly why it is the Children of Israel have such a rosy remembrance of the past. The people get hungry again, and they recall the good old days of Egypt saying to Moshe, “We remember the free fish that we ate in Egypt.” They say. “We had cucumbers, melons, leeks, and onions.” The people actually go on to list all the types of food that they received for free in Egypt. Again they were united in their desire to wanting to go back to slavery in Egypt.
Why is it that they keep going back and talking about Egypt as if it were Disneyworld? Bnei Yisrael’s behavior throughout their journey in the desert begs us to question the wisdom of God’s decision to try to free them in the first place. Of course they had food for free, they were slaves! You cannot pay for food when you are a slave, you merely accept the food given to you by your mast. And yet we see that they keep reminiscing and savoring memories of a time when they were slaves ruled over by a genocidal pharaoh.
The reason behind this seemingly puzzling behavior is a simple one. People don’t magically change from one day to the next. People don’t go from living a life of slavery into a life of freedom without the pains of transition and growth.
Changing our own habits and ways of thinking does not come any easier. The memories and habits that we picked up and were surrounded by in our childhoods, both the good and the bad, start to become nothing more than familiar. If you grew up doing things a certain way, no matter how counterproductive or destructive it is, eventually you start to see it as familiar and you can’t imagine doing things a different way.
There are many parallels between our lives and the journey that Bnei Yisrael undertook. Their journey is a perfect allegory for the process of change that we go through in our own lives. The key is in how the Israelites saw their past. They saw that they had food for free; they saw that, while they might be living under despotic rule, while their lives might have been as untenable as the life of an addict, it was all that they knew. It was familiar and therefore, no matter how dangerous, destructive or debilitating, it was safe.
The story of the exodus is ultimately a story of hope. Every Friday night when we recite the Kiddush we sanctify the day and its holiness with the words, “zecher l’yitziyat mitrayim, for the remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt.” We are saying that we honor the day because of the exodus that we went through. We are here today because of what happened in the past.
Who we are now is not who we are destined to be. Like the commandment to remember the exodus from Egypt we must remember where we came from, we must remember where it is that we would like to go and we must be able to count on those around us to be with us on our journey. Bnei Yisrael did not travel alone. It was as a people, as a community that they were freed and as a people that they arrived to the Promised Land.
We do not improve ourselves or our lives alone. We looked to loved ones, to family, friends and community, to help us on our journey from the slavery in our own lives to the freedom we yearn for. It is my hope and prayer that the Passover Seder is a time for all of us to be able to look around and to see how blessed our lives are now and to know how much greater we can make them.