Few events have marked the collective consciousness of Western Civilization as the Passover and the Hebrews’ exodus from Egypt. The current decline in biblical literacy does not negate the impact of the account of God’s judgments and deliverance on shaping culture.
In a manner possible only through eternal wisdom, the Passover maintains an acute relevance to the primary stewards of the holiday, the Jews, and the beneficiaries of their stewardship, humanity.
This Passover, the captivity and slavery of the Jewish people is not a distant memory; it’s the present tense reality as 59 hostages remain in Gaza during the week-long Passover observance. The current war and ongoing hostage situation has again presented humanity with the opportunity to recognize the plight of the Jewish people: to be the most prosperous and most persecuted people.
No people group in human history has simultaneously benefited humanity while receiving its animosity and libel. An objective observation of Israel and the worldwide Jewish community makes this reality inescapable. Representing only .2% of the world’s population, approximately 20% of Nobel Prize winners are Jewish. Israeli technology makes your smartphone possible, as well as agriculture in arid African plains. Israeli field hospitals and rescue teams readily respond to catastrophes, even when they befall nations that long for their genocide.
Yet, on October 7, 2023, after women, children and the elderly were mercilessly and barbarically slaughtered in unspeakable ways, hundreds of thousands of people around the world rallied in support of their murderers.
How can a people maintain goodwill among the nations when the nations have unceasingly, from time immemorial, sought their destruction? The Passover holds a key to how the Jewish people navigate this paradox. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks provides insight into this peculiar characteristic of the Jewish people.
“History is an answer to the question, ‘What happened?’ Memory is an answer to the question, ‘Who am I?’ History is about facts, memory is about identity. History is about something that happened to someone else, not me. Memory is my story, the past that made me who I am, of whose legacy I am the guardian for the sake of generations yet to come. Without memory, there is no identity, and without identity, we are mere dust on the surface of infinity.”
Of the myriad of gifts the Jews have granted the world, from antiquity to the present, here we find one sorely overlooked: remembering slavery and not remaining a slave. To remember slavery as a “guardian” of “legacy” as part of collective and individual identity, and not be a victim, is one of the brightest lights the Jewish people shine on humanity. The Jews, well acquainted with being the slave, the outcast, the foreigner, and the scapegoat, infuse the nations with the hope of deliverance and ascendance.
