Finding myself in Passover’s tale, I found hope for the Jewish people | Opinion

More than any other holiday, Passover captivates American Jews.

Some 70% of us will take part in a seder tonight, the ritual meal recounting the ancient story of the Jewish people’s liberation from slavery, according to Pew. We’ll grimace as we eat bitter herbs and attempt to stomach endless matzah, the bland “bread of affliction.”

Above all, we’re challenged to see ourselves in the story. The Haggadah, the medieval text that serves as a guide to the seder, demands it: “In every generation, each person must see themselves as if they went out of Egypt.”

A time of maelstrom for Jews across the globe

This year, I’m considering that obligation amid a maelstrom of troubles for the Jewish people. With the heartbreaking, continuing war in Israel, the protracted conflict in Ukraine (home to one of the world’s largest Jewish populations), spiking antisemitism around the world and on our own college campuses, and fracture throughout public life, we feel besieged from all sides.

We’re facing challenges of a proportion not seen since the post-Holocaust period, and yet the type of miracles that define the exodus story are also there to be celebrated and amplified if we have the vision to do so.

I learned that from Lev Katsaran, an internally displaced teacher I met earlier this year in the western Ukrainian city of Rivne. 

You don’t instantly clock Lev as the kind of guy who needs help. A burly martial arts specialist, he gave me probably the strongest handshake of my life — and then he broke my heart.

Lev and his wife Lyudmila escaped hard-hit eastern Ukraine. He told me about the day he almost died, when a missile slammed into their building, which had already lost electricity and running water.

“Lyuda asked me to make some coffee, and at that moment, the blast destroyed the balcony and all our windows,” he told me. “The only thing that saved my life is Lyudmila. She took me hard and threw me to the ground. I’m quite a strong man, but when that happened, I felt like I was chewing my heart in my mouth.”

Lev is one of more than 55,000 Jews helped by my organization, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, since the start of the conflict. With vital humanitarian support like food, medicine, winter aid, rent assistance — and even boxes of matzah for Passover and holiday activities — we’ve been a source of ongoing hope, with help from a coalition of partners including the Jewish Federations, Claims Conference, IFCJ, and many others.

To me, that feels like a miracle, albeit the kind sparked into existence by a plague.

Passover lives at the intersection of plagues and miracles

But that’s where Passover lives — at the uneasy intersection of plagues and miracles. For every parting of the Red Sea, there is the death of the firstborn. You can’t celebrate the manna that fed the Jews on their 40-year march through the desert without grappling with the bloody Nile, locusts, or cattle disease that decimated Egypt.

It’s an active decision to let the pendulum swing toward wonder — a battle-tested resolve to orient life around blessings not curses. It’s a choice Jews have mastered and one we continue to make today.

Lev and Lyudmila have decided to pay it forward, eager to give back to those who helped them when they arrived. Today, they volunteer at JDC’s social service center in Rivne — he teaches English and Hebrew, and she lovingly bakes challah each week.

That lesson echoes from Israel, too, as the entire country grapples with increasing vulnerability as a result of the war, suffering trauma, unemployment and loss. We’ve already aided about a million people, but many more remain. This is especially pronounced for communities in the battered north or those in the south near Gaza devastated by the brutal violence of Oct. 7.

Bruria Neuberger, who runs my organization’s resilience center in steely Ofakim, the farthest city Hamas reached during its onslaught, notes that more and more people are signing up for art therapy and other mental health interventions. In this place where terrorists murdered 52 people, it’s a blessing that her community is brave enough to know it needs help. 

“The dark memories of that day will always be with us,” Bruria said. “But we can shape the next chapter of our lives, and that’s true freedom. We all came out of Egypt, we've all walked this path, and we’ll do it again.”

Which Passover character resonates most today?

Moved by Passover’s demand that we locate ourselves in its ancient story, I keep asking myself which character resonates most today.

Is it Moses, who leads his people to a more hopeful future? Is it his sister Miriam, who gratefully danced on the other side of the parted sea and, according to Jewish tradition, had a well of water follow her in the desert?

The Haggadah doesn’t mention either one. Instead, God is all over the text, leaving the people who operationalized the miraculous behind. Some say this choice was made by the text’s authors out of fear that celebrants would be too focused on human heroes, ignoring the holy spark that made their courage possible.

But I don’t think that’s it.

They’re missing so we can focus on today’s miracle-makers: Lev and Lyudmila, Bruria and her grieving, resilient community. They represent the ordinary extraordinary — thousands of everyday individuals whose heroism and determination should inspire in us a commitment to mutual responsibility. 

My ancient ancestors, like those Jews on the front lines of today’s hotspots, saw that their fates were intertwined, and that the true miracle was to take action in the face of despair.  

How did the Jews leave Egypt? Through a million acts of kindness and neighbors helping each other. By organizing mutual aid and by making sure the strongest helped the weakest.

We are the heirs to the living legacy of that miracle, and we have more work to do to secure a better tomorrow.

Alex Weisler is a native of Rockland County, New York, and lives in Columbus, Ohio. He is a former journalist and works as JDC’s senior video and digital content producer.