“When American Jews gather for Passover this year, we will arrive at our Seders carrying worries about the multitudes of threats facing Jewish life. These worries, shaped by recent war, political anxiety and personal experience, will undoubtedly emerge over the course of the evening. Some may be surprised to discover that those they trust most, their friends and family around the table, interpret the dangers of the present moment in fundamentally different ways. While our disagreements might present as political, in reality they will reflect something deeper about how to understand the Passover story itself, bringing to the fore questions of where we locate Pharaoh today and what kinds of threats the Exodus is meant to prepare us to confront.

The Passover seder is an exercise in Jewish memory. Through the event, we rehearse how to recognize oppression, respond to danger, and imagine redemption. Modeled off the Greek symposium, the Seder is designed to foster a healthy amount of discussion and debate. This year, however, such disagreements will feel unusually intimate, even tense, as they come to reveal that despite a shared liturgy, every one of us has distinct and oftentimes opposing intuitions about how Jews should organize and act politically.”

Read the complete op-ed in The Jewish Journal