Over the past weeks, students at Heschel have been learning about and preparing to celebrate Pesach. This week’s middah is: “Appreciate the different ways that we are free.” Each year, through our Living Haggadah Curriculum students learn different ways to appreciate the message of freedom in the Pesach Haggadah. Over the coming days, may we all appreciate the different ways we are free, and resolve to help all people who may celebrate freedom. As part of the Pesach Haggadah we read: “בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצריים – In every generation, each of us is obligated to regard ourselves as having personally gone out of Mitzrayim (Ancient Egypt)”. We are obligated to “see” ourselves as having experienced the bitterness of slavery and the exhilaration of freedom. We are obligated to engage in an act of imagination, a “visualization” exercise aided by the multi-sensory tools of food, song, and storytelling. This obligation to imagine forces us to consider the meaning of slavery and freedom; it compels us to be thankful for our freedom, and to empathize with those who are not. This Peasch, may we all take seriously our freedom and our obligation to imagine the journey from slavery to freedom. May we assume the obligation to consider, reflect, and celebrate, as if we ourselves had gone out of Mitzrayim.
Chag Kasher Vesameach,
Moreh Greg
