Pesach in a time of retreating democracy 

The English poet and mythology scholar Robert Graves, wrote: "There is one story and one story only/ That will prove worth your telling/ Whether [you] are learned bard or gifted child." 

Graves wasn’t speaking about Pesach, but for the Jewish people, he could have been. The Exodus saga is the oldest and most compelling story of who we are, and the pivotal festival around which Judaism turns. 

Story is the central feature of our most celebrated Jewish festival. Seder night – where the wise sage and the simple child join in storytelling – is the most profound distillation of Jewish dreams, aspirations and actions.  

This tale of a slave people challenging the most powerful and enduring empire the world has ever known – already some eighteen centuries old at the time of the Exodus – is startlingly relevant for our times. 

The Seder is not only the story of the formation of the Jewish nation. It is perhaps the oldest meditation on the politics of power, the scourge of slavery, the gift of freedom, the rigours of responsibility and the nature of identity.  

It endures in every generation. The Haggadah tells us to “regard ourselves as if we too were liberated from Egypt”. Melbourne Holocaust survivor Tuvia Lipson told his family that the imperative of the Haggadah was not an “as if“ for him: he had been there and emerged from darkness into light, slavery into salvation. 

Pesach is about the origins of Jewish communal identity and a reminder of the centrality of faith, family and community. Our identity was forged in fire and celebrated around a fire: the Passover barbecued lamb on the eve of the Exodus.

The power of a shared destiny and a sense of peoplehood would carry this nascent nation through the hellfire of history and empires to the streets of Tel Aviv under rocket attack.

It begins with the birth of Moses, his outrage at the abuse of his people on the building sites of the great Egyptian empire, his epiphany at the burning bush and his chutzpah in challenging the great “Crocodile of the Nile”, that most feared monarch, Pharaoh, identified generally as Rameses II. 

Moses remains the model of a liberator, law giver and champion of social justice. He is the man with a fire in his heart, a flame ignited by a God “whose heart does not stop burning”. In a world once again confronted with the might of determined autocracies, we should draw comfort and strength from the alternative vision of Moses – a society built on defence of the powerless, respect for all human beings regardless of their wealth or social status, a conviction that freedom feeds the human spirit.  

Moses is a giant of a man, but he is also the humblest of people, a telling rebuke in our age where hubris has replaced humility, and the best of our leaders often exhibit the worst abuses and excesses. In the telling of the story from the Haggadah on Passover evening the name of Moses is strangely absent, perhaps emphasising not only the modesty of the man but the responsibility of every one of us to advance the ideas and ideals of the Exodus odyssey.  

As anthropologist Margaret Mead famously said: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has”. We change society and ourselves by remembering and acting out the lessons from the Egyptian exile. 

Whenever the Torah wants to convey the importance of compassion and ethical behaviour it invokes the experience of this exile: Remember you were a slave in Egypt so do not pervert the justice due to a stranger, the orphan, the vulnerable.  

The rabbis also insist that we must not rejoice in our enemy’s defeat, even when we have to retaliate against a deadly enemy. This is the source of the custom at the Seder evening of spilling drops of wine when we recount the plagues that befell the Egyptians. 

The extended relevance of the Pesach story for the Jewish people today is articulated by the compiler of the Haggadah: “For not only one tyrant has risen up against us to destroy us, but in every generation, tyrants have sought to destroy us and the Holy One bless it be He, has delivered us from their hands.” 

The Exodus account continues to shape Jewish identity. We not only read history, but we relive it in the actions and rituals of the evening, imagining ourselves back on the banks of the Nile as we dip our food in saltwater tears and eat our bitter herbs.  

The past is not only relevant but present in our celebration of the Seder in 2025. “The battle to affirm the right of the State of Israel to live securely is a contemporary version of the Egyptian experience," said Rabbi Soloveitchik.  

The story of the liberation from tyranny and the fight for freedom is the story of Jewish history and it continues, not only for Jews but for all those with whom we live. A key challenge for the State of Israel is to preserve and expand its democracy and strengthen the freedoms of its institutions and its citizens. It simply cannot afford to surrender to what Alexis de Tocqueville, called the “tyranny of the majority". 

The Pesach saga is ultimately a story of human courage and hope. It is also the story of the resilience, enduring optimism and strength of the Jewish people. Judaism has always taught that disasters and obstacles are temporary and that we have the power to overcome them.  

Echoing Martin Luther King’s famous words that hatred is not beaten by hatred but by love, the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said we don't vanquish evil with hate, we vanquish it with faith in life. And that is a story worth the telling and the retelling.