April 12, 2022

As we celebrate the holiday of redemption this week, there is much we can learn from the generation that left Mitzrayim after two centuries of oppression and slavery about the true meaning of redemption. You may recall that the generation that left Mitzrayim—those who directly witnessed the miracles of the plagues and sea—was not the same generation that entered the Land of Israel. After the cheit of the Meraglim, the Midrash tells us that each year over the 40 years spent wandering in the desert, the generation that left Egypt dug their own graves each year on Tisha B’av, and did not enter the Promised Land. The commentaries Ibn Ezra and Nechama Liebowitz elucidate that although the Exodus brought forth the birth of the new nation of Am Yisrael, the “generation of the Wilderness” was unable to fully let go of their identity as slaves even after leaving Egypt. Without a new, expanded identity, lasting change was not possible, and they never experienced what it means to truly be free. 

Many of us strive to make lasting change in our daily lives, whether it be in our relationships, our physical bodies, our finances or our happiness and mental states. What we may not realize is that in order to create lasting change in any of these areas, there needs to be an identity shift, or a new expanded identity.

If we believe we are something, that belief of who we are will color our behavior for the rest of our lives. 

Unfortunately, behaviors and goals alone are not enough to make change permanent because the strongest force in the human personality is the need to stay consistent with how we define ourselves.  For example, if we have a goal to lose weight but we see ourselves as someone who is overweight, our identity will triumph every time, even if it is an identity that does not serves us. If we believe we are something, that belief of who we are will color our behavior for the rest of our lives. 

The month of Nissan, during which Pesach falls, is commonly referred to as the month of redemption. In the Gemara we read, “In Nissan they were redeemed, in Nissan they will be redeemed” (Rosh Hashanah 11a).  And yet, despite the wonderous miracles witnessed by the redeemed Jews in Mitzrayim and during the Exodus itself, their intense faith is proven to be transient. Twentieth-century biblical scholar Nechama Liebowitz explains that their skepticism—the residuals of their two-hundred-year identity as slaves—imprison them even as they are on the brink of freedom. The “generation of the Wilderness” suffered from a slave-complex cultivated during centuries of Egyptian bondage: having lived their entire lives as slaves to their Egyptian masters, the Jewish people could not see beyond this and were imprisoned by their subconscious subservience, despite no longer being physically enslaved in Egypt.

The pesukim relate that upon seeing Pharoah and his chariots in pursuit, the Jewish people froze in fear and cried out to Moshe, “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us be, and we will serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness’?” (Shemos 14:11-12). In his commentary on these verses, Ibn Ezra explains that the reason a group of 600,000 young and strong men shrank back in fear of their pursuers was because they were psychologically incapable of defending themselves against the very people who had been their owners and masters for centuries. The Jews were stuck in their “slave mentality,” just as we may be stuck with our identities.

Ibn Ezra’s psychological insight extends beyond this one interaction with the Egyptians. The Wilderness generations’ slave-mentality influences their wanderings in the desert, preventing them from fighting against the Egyptians and Amalek, as well as causing them to complain constantly for food and water and, commit the sin of the meraglim (spies), barring them from entering Eretz Yisrael. This was not a generation with the willpower needed to fight against the Canaanim and conquer the land of Israel. For this reason, Ibn Ezra states, the current generation would die during their 40-year wanderings in the desert, during which time a new generation, one that was not born into slavery and therefore free from the psychological bondage of slavery, would be raised and ready to conquer the land of Canaan.

In order for the generation of the Wilderness to have been able to enter the land of Israel, a paradigm shift of identity from slavery to freedom was needed. Unfortunately, despite their strong emunah in G-d, which enabled them to follow Moshe into the desert, and their desire to enter the promised Land, the Wilderness generation was ultimately unable to escape their slave identity. They were forever imprisoned by it, despite being physically freed from their Egyptian slave owners.

We each hold identities and beliefs that inhibit us from making lasting change.

The lesson of the generation of the Wilderness still applies today. We each hold identities and beliefs that inhibit us from making lasting change. By investigating them this Pesach, we can forge new identities that will set us free and bring us the quality of life we desire. Personally, I have shaped, formed and expanded many new identities for myself, including my identity as a single mother. My identity has shifted from believing that a good mother must be a martyr (which does not serve us!) to believing and identifying that a good mother means being a (role)model. 

There is a price we pay for living to satisfy who we believe we “should be.” For the Wilderness generation, the cost of being locked into their slave identity was dying in the desert. It is easy to blame external circumstances, such as COVID-19, change or uncertainty, challenging relationships, work and more for our struggles. But ultimately, it is up to us to create a new identity and belief for ourselves, set increased standards and create rituals to protect our new identities so that we can become who we believe we really are. 

Alanna Apfel lives in Los Angeles and is the founder of and patient advocate at AA Insurance Advocacy, helping patients negotiate with insurance plans for reimbursement on their out of pocket therapy mental health expenses. Alanna can be reached at aainsuranceadvocate@gmail.com.

The Seder is the ultimate Jewish celebration of freedom. We sit (or recline) with our families and friends around the table recounting the story, as if each of us was a slave who witnessed the terrible plagues and then suddenly, at midnight, marched upright with clenched fists and unleavened bread on our backs, out of Egypt.  

Different generations and communities celebrate the Seder according to their own customs and interpretations, adding references to the embodiment of Pharaoh as the main tormentor of the Jews of that time. After the Holocaust and the rebirth of Israel, these events were interpreted as a strong parallel to the transition from slavery to freedom. 

In recent years, as those memories faded, some politically liberal Jews have shifted the emphasis from the core Jewish experience, first in Egypt and then in subsequent generations, to a universalist version embracing the downtrodden of the world. I first encountered this as a student in Berkeley in 1969, in the form of a “Freedom Haggadah,” which sought to draw comparisons between the events of the exodus and the burning political issues of the day in America—specifically civil rights (as it was known then) and the women’s liberation movement. Egypt, Israelites and slavery were still part of the text, but were no longer the primary or only focus. Armed with my copy of that Haggadah, I went home for our non-liberal particularist family seders.

In the decades since, successors to these activists of the 1960s moved the emphasis further away from Jewish history, culture and identity and towards universalism in the form of identifying with all victims, many real, and but also some that are imagined. (Today’s edition would focus on the war against Ukraine, with Putin in the role of Pharaoh.) 

In the progressive versions of the Haggadah that I have seen, the traditional four cups of wine are reinterpreted—with no mention of the traditional symbolism of the fourth cup, associated with God’s promise to bring the Israelites to the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Exodus 6:8). Leaving Egypt was never considered an end in itself, but rather the first step in a complex process of redemption, via Sinai and the commandments, and ending with the arrival (forty years later) in the Land of Israel. 

By deliberately disconnecting the two, the revisionists are deleting this core dimension. In their political spin, this cup, in a paraphrase of the others, is supposed to represent “a world where no one is held in slavery … a world without sweatshop laborers, where all workers are able to make a fair wage” (“A Haggadah for Justice – Truah”). The particularism of Jewish existence—the Promised Land and Land of Israel—are censored out of existence. 

Similarly, in every generation for 2000 years in exile and Diaspora, our ancestors ended the seder by singing “Next year in Jerusalem.” But in another manifestation of intersectionality and self-assimilation, this statement and all mention of Jerusalem and Jewish self-determination are erased from progressive seders. This is part of the wider assault on Jewish history and identity, in which Zionism is presented as a form of “colonialism” and, according to the NGO industry and the United Nations, “apartheid.” To the degree that Israel is presented at all in these versions of the Haggadah, it is through this hostile and distorted filter, envisioned not as the homeland of the Jewish people, but rather as a country of “all its inhabitants”—the catch-phrase for dismantling the Jewish state. Far from the celebration of Jewish freedom and deliverance from oppression, the intersectional Haggadah highlights the need for “grappling with the realities of Jewish power, Palestine solidarity, and the sense of Jewish complicity with Palestinian suffering and white supremacy.”

Like the wicked child in the Haggadah, the radical universalists and inter-sectionalists are excluding themselves, their lost and uninformed followers, and their children from the Jewish community.  

Like the wicked child in the Haggadah, the radical universalists and inter-sectionalists are excluding themselves, their lost and uninformed followers, and their children from the Jewish community.  

These distortions and interpretations go far beyond the student-led “Freedom Haggadah” of 50 years ago. The earlier versions added universal concerns without erasing the traditional Jewish interpretations and themes, including the celebration of our freedom in the Land of Israel, and the right of the Jewish people to determine our own destiny. 

Just as the exodus from Egypt necessarily led to the arrival in the Land of Israel, the founders of Zionism understood that to escape from the oppression of the diaspora, the Jewish people must be anchored in our homeland.

In contrast, the marginal Jews and anti-Zionists of today are marching backwards from freedom into a world of assimilation and slavery.

In contrast, the marginal Jews and anti-Zionists of today are marching backwards from freedom into a world of assimilation and slavery. By prohibiting all particularism, and specifically attacking the centrality of Israel to the Jewish people, they are tearing down our identity. 

For generations upon generations, the texts and collective rituals of the Passover seder were primary expressions of Jewish continuity and the everlasting yearning for our own freedom, which every family taught to their children. This continuity is the essence of our identity as a people and a nation, and the key to our survival. 

Next year in Jerusalem. 

Gerald Steinberg is emeritus Professor of Political Science at Bar Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor. His latest book is “Menachem Begin and the Israel-Egypt Peace Process: Between Ideology and Political Realism” (Indiana University Press).