thoughts on passover and immigration reform

Passover is a truly unique holiday. Unlike the usually cold and rainy Sukkot, the Jewish spring time holiday is actually occurring in a beautiful spring! Also, of course, there's the whole no bread thing.

For me, the uniqueness of the hoiday truly plays out in the command to remember the Exodus from Egypt as if we were the ones who had left.

Now, what does it mean to remember? One type of remembering is passive. You hear a song and remember the love you once had in your halcyon days of youth. I believe that the type of memory stressed by the Pesach is of a more active variety. We hold the seder in our home, and we do not merely allow the story of our liberation wash over us and cause us to "remember" the Exodus. No! We are instructed to drash out the tale of our oppression and freedom. We must raise the matzah and maror and explain their meaning.

The remembering of Passover is a consciousness we are told to take up as our own. An intimacy with and inherent compassion for the reality of oppression and the deep human thirst for justice and freedom is the gift God has given us through this chag.

In my internship at the Jewish FundS for Justice, my main task has been to develop educational materials so that Jewish communities can engage with the issue of immigration. To my mind, ignoring this issue runs directly counter to the type of remembering we are supposed to be taking up on Passover. Our experience of slavery is one of the first struggles of the displaced in human history! It took our crying to God to have God remember the promise made to us in times past. There are more voices crying out all around us, and ignoring them negates the holy task this holiday has given us.