People usually connect because they share a country, a language, a common history. But what we have goes beyond that. Ours is a connection that defies time, distance, and cultural differences.
We are united even if we speak different languages, even if we live on different continents, even if our cultures were shaped in distant lands.
Because we carry the same memory.
The same wound.
The same hope.
And I ask myself, how many English people know when the Mayflower set sail, how many people were on board, or what kind of bread they ate? I doubt many do—and that was only about 400 years ago.
Yet somehow, every Jew around the world knows with absolute clarity that 600,000 of us left Egypt on the 15th of Nissan and that we ate matzah -over 3,300 years ago!
We know this not because someone told us, but because we live it—year after year, as if it were happening for the first time. Because Pesach is not just a story from the past.
It is the eternal narrative of our people.
Pesach is not only about personal freedom. It is about collective redemption—about the dignity of living together, as brothers and sisters, under the sovereignty of G-d.
For centuries, that redemption was only a distant promise.
We would say, “This year we are slaves, next year we will be free.”
And yet, freedom felt like an impossible dream. We were a people without land, without an army, without a voice in the world.
But today, that distant future… has arrived.
We have a country. Imperfect, yes. Challenging, no doubt. But it is ours. And it is a miracle.
We are a beacon of light in a region often clouded by darkness.
Our sages teach that suffering inhibits prophecy—because pain causes a person to turn inward. And for generations, that was our reality: enclosed in mourning, persecution, and the fight for survival.
But today, we live a different reality, and it’s important that we recognize it. Today, we can look outward.
Today, we are not just witnesses to history. We are the ones writing it.
May this Pesach inspire us to stop seeing ourselves as victims, and start seeing ourselves as builders of a better future.
May we become the protagonists of a society where power is not the pursuit, where people are valued for who they are, where we live with purpose—as vessels of the Divine Presence.
And may it be that, after such a long journey, we finally reach—together—the destination our ancestors could only pray for.
Wishing you a Pesach Kasher ve Sameach.
May this festival bring us freedom—inside and out.
Debbie Shiro Akinín
Leave a Reply