Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, one of the great ethical thinkers of 19th-century Judaism, once visited a matzah bakery to certify it as kosher for Pesach. He examined the ingredients and the ovens, but spent even more time observing the working conditions of the laborers. In the end, he refused to grant certification. The matzah was technically kosher — but the moral conditions were not. For Salanter, the two were inseparable.
Pesach and Easter, which this year fall in the same week, both speak of liberation. Both tell a story of transition — from slavery to freedom, from death to life — but above all, they ask us to transform memory into something alive.
At Pesach we read in the Haggadah: “In every generation, each person must see themselves as if they personally came out of Egypt.” But if we truly saw ourselves that way, how would we live differently?
The Torah offers a first answer at the very beginning of the Exodus story:
“וַיֵּצֵא אֶל־אֶחָיו וַיַּרְא בְּסִבְלֹתָם…”
“Moses went out to his brothers and saw their suffering…” (Exodus 2:11)
Long before the people leave Egypt, Moses “leaves” his palace and sees. But he does not merely observe. As Rashi explains, he “set his eyes and his heart to share in their suffering.” The beginning of liberation is the moment when the other is no longer invisible, like the workers in Salanter’s story.
And, uncomfortable as it may be to admit, today we are often the “Egyptians” in the biblical story. We are the ones in positions of relative strength, in our homes, in our societies. And so the true test of freedom is how we treat the waiter, the caregiver, the immigrant, the stranger who knocks at the door, all those who, in that moment, depend on us.
The Torah reminds us no fewer than thirty-six times: “You were strangers in the land of Egypt.” It is precisely when we hold power that the moral meaning of freedom is revealed.
The same is true of what we place on our tables. We celebrate freedom, yet rarely ask where our food comes from, what labor made it possible, or what human or animal suffering may stand behind it. Jewish tradition does not separate ritual from ethics. If eating is part of a spiritual life, then we cannot ignore the conditions that make it possible.
The memory of Egypt is, above all, a moral lens. It asks not only what we were freed from, but how we use our freedom. A freedom that is measured, first and foremost, by our choices and by the way we treat others and the world around us.
May this Pesach be a time of liberation and reconciliation, bringing us, even just a little, closer to Shalom , with others and within ourselves.
Wishing you a Pesach Sameach ve’Kasher, Moadim leSimcha,
Rabbi Haim F. Cipriani