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Day 4
The Story Beyond
Tonight, nine out of every 10 Jews in Israel will sit around the Seder table and retell the story of the exodus from Egypt. This event, which occurred approximately 3,500 years ago, continues to ignite many people’s imagination.
You do not need to be Orthodox or traditional to perceive a seminal ethos in the story.
Many non-Jews, too, had an intense experience of the narrative of the book of Exodus and shaped their inner world in its light. Both the Puritans, who immigrated to the New World, as well as the African Americans, who arrived there as slaves, saw themselves as continuing the exodus saga, and were thus able to overcome the enormous difficulties that confronted them.
It is no coincidence that herut (freedom) and ahrayut (responsibility) sound so similar in Hebrew. For the objective of the battle for freedom, in its physical sense, is to allow those released from servitude to take responsibility for their own lives and thereby acquire freedom of the mind and spirit, as well.
Passover gains new scope and meaning when we understand that the Festival of Freedom is also the Festival of Responsibility.
--Prof. Yedidia Z. Stern, The Festival of Freedom and Responsibility, en.idi.il/articles/14377
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