Are you ready to leave slavery behind and move into freedom?
On Passover, we read, “In every generation a person is obligated to see themselves as though they went out from Egypt.” This year, the question of how to achieve this experience is especially poignant. How can we feel free when every day the bonds of enslavement from social and climate chaos are binding us and those around us ever more tightly into a new kind of enslavement?
This question was on my mind recently as we went for a walk at a nearby conservation area. Soon after arriving, we spotted two herons. One flew off almost immediately, but the second wandered in the shallow water near the trail, listening, searching for prey, the sun shining on it, the water reflecting its image and those of all the trees and shrubs. As I stopped to observe, my heart danced for joy, and I found my answer.
We find freedom when our hearts and souls overcome the ability of our circumstances to drag us down into spiritual enslavement. We find freedom when in the midst of despair we experience love and compassion and delight. We find freedom when we discover we have the strength to resist in ways we had never known we could.
I remember reading about a siddur - a prayer book - written on scraps of paper in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. A freezing, starving man, surrounded by death and regimented hatred, wrote down every prayer he could remember, and through this effort found a space of freedom for himself that may very well have helped him survive.
This year and this Passover, it behooves us to acknowledge and explore what helps us remain free in our hearts and souls. Acknowledging and nourishing the freedom within us is a profound act of resistance and can lead us to previously untapped depths of strength and courage.
To help you on this journey, we are providing an updated version of our nature Haggadah. We invite you to take it with you into the woods, along with your friends or family, either before or during Passover, and let the experience bring you to freedom in some unexpected way.
May you find freedom where and when you least expect it.
Chag sameach - Happy Passover,
Rabbi Katy
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