Pesach: The Time-Traveler’s Table
Rabbi Menachem
Creditor
April 7, 2025
Today is exactly 18 months since October 7th, 2023. And if that weighs on us—and of course it does—our hearts still know that we can’t begin to comprehend the weight borne by those who’ve been held in darkness, in tunnels, for 18 unrelenting months. And so as we prepare for Pesach, a holiday of liberation, of leaning into freedom, let us not forget that there are people we love who are not yet free. Whatever we carry into this year’s Seder—and I do not diminish for one second the burdens you and I carry—we must also carry them: the hostages, the families who count the minutes, the ache, the loss, the terrible waiting. Every second, every hour, every day.
Right now, on my kitchen table, there are two Haggadot created by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a sacred space supported by UJA-Federation of NY since day one. One is from last year. One is from this year. Both are soaked in love and agony. But this year’s Haggadah is different—it includes words of freed hostages. It includes commentary and prayer by those who survived the unbearable, voices of those once enslaved, once silenced, now speaking Torah, now interpreting their own Exodus. It contains hope. Pain, yes. But also hope. That alone would be enough to break a person open.
It was never meant to be this way. And still—we teach Pesach anyway. We must. Our tradition insists that we enter this ancient story as if we ourselves were there. That is what Jewish time demands—not nostalgia, but embodiment. Not pretending, but remembering so fully that we awaken the past into the present.
There is a legend (Genesis Rabbah 55:88):
In the very moment the Israelites stepped into the Sea, Mount Moriah—the mountain where Abraham bound Isaac—began to move from its place, altar and all. Abraham’s hand was raised. Isaac was still bound. That whole scene, that unimaginable moment, had been waiting since before the world was born.
Far from there, at the Sea, God cried out to Moses: “My children are in distress! The Sea is before them, the enemy is behind them—and you are standing there praying?”
Moses, overwhelmed, asked, “What should I do?”
God answered: “Lift your staff!”
And at that moment, the Sea split—and on Mount Moriah, the Angel’s voice rang out: “Do not raise your hand against the boy.”
Time collapsed.
The story of Abraham and Isaac and the story of the Exodus folded into one another, held in the same breath, the same sacred heartbeat. Because Jewish memory isn’t linear. It is living. It is layered. And in every generation, we are called to see ourselves in it. To feel it in our bones.
This is why, even in the heaviness of this year’s Seder, we drink the first cup of wine, we lean to the left. We dare to act free even when parts of our people are still in shackles. That’s the paradox of Jewish ritual—we are here and there, then and now. We are Abraham holding the knife. We are Isaac bound to the altar. We are the children stepping into the water. We are Moses lifting the staff.
And we are the parents praying for their children to come home.
Pesach was never meant to be celebrated in a time of complete peace. It never has been. Even in better years, it ends with yearning: Next Year in Jerusalem. Not as a conclusion, but as a cry. This year, that cry is more urgent. More real.
Because today, we say: Bring them home now.
We gather at our tables this year not from a place of comfort but from a place of radical honesty. Pesach demands it. Our ancestors didn’t sugarcoat the story. We begin in genut, in degradation. “We were slaves.” We were lost. We were wounded. And we tell it like it was. That’s how the journey to freedom begins—not from joy, but from truth.
And yet… at the very beginning of the Seder, we say borei pri hagafen, we drink the wine, we lean to the left. We dare to taste sweetness. We dare to embody freedom even while recounting the pain. That’s Jewish time. That’s the miracle of ritual. That’s what it means to be awake to this moment, every moment.
The difference between the two Haggadot on my table is profound. The first had no voices of return. The second is shaped by testimonies of survivors, soldiers, and freed hostages. There is grief in every word. But there is also life. There is also dancing.
Not all of them dance. But some do. And that is enough to whisper hope into this broken world.
This is what Pesach must mean this year. That even now—especially now—we must be time travelers. We must lose our roots just long enough to remember who we are, and then plant them again, deeper. We must drink the wine, tell the story, and make space at our table for every soul not yet free.
Because when we travel through time—when we truly remember—we become the people who can walk through seas and move mountains. We become the people who don’t stop praying, and who also know when to lift the staff.
May our feet be grounded, our hearts in heaven, and our voices loud enough to split every sea that still stands in our way.
