We Are Enough: A Pesach Reflection
Rabbi Menachem Creditor
April 11, 2025
We are praying—praying with broken hearts—for our 59 brothers and sisters who remain captive. Twenty-four of them, we believe, are alive. And every one of them should be home.
How can we celebrate a holiday of freedom if they are not foremost in our minds and our souls?
Many of us will place a lemon on our Seder plates this year, as Rachel Goldberg-Polin suggested—a symbol both beautiful and bitter. The lemon doesn't replace the matzah or the maror. But it belongs at the table. It reminds us that while this is not the whole story, it is our entire moment. And one day, our descendants will ask: “How did you mark Pesach during the second year of captivity?”
We must tell the truth. We must hold it all.
This day is also sacred in another way: it marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald.
Some of us carry the trauma of ancestors murdered there. Some of us descend from survivors who walked out alive but never untouched. There are images and testimonies, but more than anything else, there are stories. They live in us. They demand to be told.
This year, the lemon is our new ritual object. A burst of color. A sting of truth. A commitment to remember and build meaning. Because that’s how we build life. That’s how we build a future.
And with all of this on our shoulders—freedom not yet won, memory that won’t let go—you might be asking:
How are we supposed to hold all of this?
How could we possibly be enough?
Let me share a small tradition from my family. Every year, ever since my children were little, we turn bedikat chametz—the search for leaven—into a scavenger hunt. I’d write terrible rhyming clues, some in the style of Dr. Seuss, leading them around the house.
Here’s the wild part: we clean our homes of chametz… and then we hide chametz… and then we bless the “search” for the chametz - we just hid.
Why?
It’s almost absurd. We create a ritual to find what we just put there. That cannot be about getting rid of chametz. It has to be something deeper.
I believe the heart of Pesach happens before the holiday begins. It happens in the moment we search. Because in the climax of that ritual, we say a short Aramaic declaration:
“All chametz in my possession—whether I’ve seen it or not, whether I found it or not—let it be ownerless as the dust of the earth.”
What a prayer. What a spell. Through words—through intention—we transform the burden we might have missed into dust. It’s magical thinking. Holy magic.
And what does it really mean, for those of us who live in history, conscious and overwhelmed?
It means: you are enough.
Even if you missed something.
Even if you feel like you’re fumbling through the pain and the rituals.
Even if the story is too big, and the moment is too much.
You. Are. Enough.
Say it with me:
We are enough.
We are enough.
We are enough.
Pesach is coming. The Seders are tomorrow night—and the night after.
Whoever you’re with, ask your questions.
If you're alone, ask them anyway.
Point to the matzah. Taste the maror. Sing the songs. Open the door.
We will fight for freedom.
We will tell our story.
We will lean to the left.
We will reach toward hope.
When we open the door for Elijah and Miriam this year, may they be one step closer.
This year, may we send our hearts to the east and sing our way forward.
This Pesach, may we be strong and free.
For our beloved sisters and brothers in captivity. For ourselves. For those we love. For our people.
And for our whole, broken, beautiful world.