Rosh Hodesh A Blessing for the Month of Nisan: Telling Stories in the First-Person Plural
When our son was about three years old, we went to visit my great aunt Bert. She was 102 at the time, the oldest person he had ever met. He sat quietly at my side for a while, watching her cautiously from across the room, and then, with more than a trace of wonder in his voice, he whispered in my ear, 鈥淲as she in聽Mitzrayim?鈥�
Mitzrayim. The ancient land of Egypt where our ancestors were slaves to Pharaoh. Where,聽as we recite at the Passover seder each year,聽飞别听were slaves to Pharaoh.聽Avadim hayinu.聽And the Holy One brought us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.
This Passover, may we quiet all of the noise long enough to remember that the single most important gift we can give our children is to continue telling 鈥� and singing 鈥� our stories in the first-person plural.
This is our story of stories. We tell it in the first-person plural so that we, and our children, learn to take it personally.聽聽At the seder, we don鈥檛 just tell the story, we eat it 鈥� quite literally internalizing it to make it our own.聽By the age of three, our son had already tasted enough matzah and dipped enough parsley in saltwater tears, to have metabolized the story of our people鈥檚 Exodus from Egypt not as a distant legend but as family lore. Here he was, meeting our oldest living relative. Maybe she actually remembered what it was like 鈥� what it was like to be a slave, what it was like to face the forbidding Sea, what it was like to experience freedom for the first time.
As his mother, I, too, had been hearing the story of our Exodus from Egypt for as long as I could remember. It was a story that had long since left the page and entered my life in important and sometimes unexpected ways. I remember as a teenager coming to my mother upset about a situation that felt desperate to me at the time. 鈥淚magine,鈥� she said, 鈥渏ust think how the Israelites must have felt standing at the Sea with the Egyptian army closing in behind them. If they had hope, so can you!鈥�
I don鈥檛 remember if, as a distraught teenager, I fully appreciated this perspective at the time 鈥� I doubt it! But it was a gift my mother gave me many times over again. The ability to hold this, and other stories, close. To know that I was not alone. The stories we tell again and again become part of us, and we, in turn, become part of them. They accompany us, anchor us, comfort, cajole, and command us: 鈥淵ou shall not oppress the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You know the heart of the stranger.鈥�
As an adult, the story of the Exodus has accompanied me through some of the most difficult periods of my life, not only as prose but as prayer. In the beautiful words of my brother, Rabbi Stephen Cohen, this is the essence of the Mi Chamocha prayer, our daily recitation from the Song at the Sea: 鈥淭he God of Exodus throws open the door of the Red Sea for every human being trapped in desperate straits. The secret which we conceal from each other but which this prayer seeks to expose, is that each of us at times finds ourselves standing trapped at the sea, with the pounding of horse hooves behind us . . . Sadness. Addiction. Envy. Hunger. Anger. Illness. Loneliness. Shame. Grief. Poverty. Violence. Each of us is pursued by enemies, both real and imagined. And the sea is the unknown, inscrutable and impassable, stretched out forbidding before us . . . And yet: 鈥淥ur souls are like a bird escaped from the fowlers鈥� snare. The snare has broken, and we are escaped.鈥� (Psalm 124) How the opening occurs is not explained. Sometimes it does not even look like an opening. We bring it about through our own efforts, but it comes upon us by surprise and beyond our control.鈥�
This year, as we enter the month of Nisan and begin the process of preparing for our Passover seders, I am thinking about the quiet courage of Jewish parents everywhere who are choosing to continue to tell this story in the first-person plural.
This year, as we enter the month of Nisan and begin the process of preparing for our Passover seders, I am thinking about the quiet courage of Jewish parents everywhere who are choosing to continue to tell this story in the first-person plural. Parents of preschoolers at Temple Israel in Detroit. Parents of young children at the Cheider school in Amsterdam. Parents of children all over Israel who are doing their Passover shopping between trips to the bomb shelter. Parents of children in my own community and in communities across the United States who are feeling a new, unfamiliar twinge of anxiety as they drop their own kids off at synagogue or school. Parents who will sit with their children at the seder table and joyfully sing, 鈥�Avadim hayinu. We were slaves to Pharaoh. And the Holy One brought us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.鈥�
In these difficult days, many of us are asking 鈥� understandably, necessarily 鈥� how to best keep our children and ourselves safe. We have countless meetings about security protocols and equipment. We argue about the most effective means of combatting rising antisemitism. Those on the left conveniently blame those on the right for the most lethal threats, and those on the right conveniently blame those on the left for the most insidious. Subtly, sadly, and more often than we care to admit, we blame ourselves and each other for the hate that is directed toward us.
This Passover, may we quiet all of that noise long enough to remember that the single most important gift we can give our children is to continue telling 鈥� and singing 鈥� our stories in the first-person plural.
To remember that we are not alone. To remember that we have been in narrow places before, and we have left them behind. How the opening occurs is not explained. Sometimes it does not even look like an opening. Our story of redemption comes down to this. An opening, where we could see none. An opening, that comes to us as a gift from beyond. An opening that we are obligated to help create.
I don鈥檛 remember how I responded when my son asked me at age three whether his great-great-aunt had actually been in Mitzrayim. But I hope I whispered back, 鈥淵es, she was. We were all there. And we all went forth together. We are all going forth together, still.鈥�