OPINION
As Milken students return refreshed from Spring Break after celebrating Passover, Jewish communities from all over the world reflect on the holiday’s meaning as it relates to Zionism, Israel, and Antisemitism. The story of Passover and the freeing of Jewish people from Slavery has largely become the centerpiece of this reflection.
Though the Israelites’ escaping Egyptian slavery took place before those enslaved arrived back in Israel 40 years later after generations away, and this happened significantly before Theodore Herzl would, in the 19th c., develop Zionism, the Passover story has always felt inextricably Israeli. Some Jews would argue that the existence of modern day Israel has no connection to the biblical stories that form our holiday.
To me, this severs a bond between the ancient and modern Jewish people and defeats the purpose of a recurring tradition passed from dor to dor (generation to generation). I think Passover is absolutely linked to Israel.
As Jews in the Exodus tale face slavery and subjugation within Egypt, the Torah provides a very clear message: Jewish residence in a foreign land will result in some sort of subjugation or discrimination. Although the Passover story provides an intense example of this through slavery and the genocide of all baby boys, this general theme holds true throughout all of Jewish history.
From the Spanish Inquisition to the Russian pogroms in the 19th and 20th century to the Holocaust to the expulsion of Jews from numerous Middle Eastern countries – and so many other instances – we see that historically Jews are so often less safe outside of the land of Israel.
Within the story of Passover, the Jews no longer live in the land promised to them by God, and the Egyptians “made life bitter for them with harsh labor at mortar and bricks and with all sorts of tasks in the field” (Exodus 1:14). The trend of Jewish subjugation outside the land of Israel has always existed and has taken modern day form in explicit Jewish hatred seen around the world since October 7th.
But Zionism and the state of Israel directly address this and seek to establish a homeland for the Jewish people with the protections of modern day political sovereignty. Today, many believe Zionism is a niche or even extremist wing of Judaism that gained popularity in the last one hundred or so years in response to the Holocaust. This is not so. Among much else, the tale of Passover demonstrates that Zionism is a clear reaction to Jewish suffering that has taken place over thousands of generations dating back to ancient Egypt.
Additionally, the arc Moses’ character takes throughout the book of Exodus directly parallels the Jewish return to the land of Israel. During Moses’ infancy, he is saved from the Pharaoh’s decree to kill all Jewish baby boys by his mother, Yohevet, sister, Miriam, and an Egyptian princess, and he unintentionally becomes part of the Egyptian royal family.
Through these circumstances, Moses must thus grow up never knowing that he is a Jewish person and considers himself fully Egyptian. This is similar to the common Jewish experience in the diaspora after the destruction of the second Jewish Temple and before the creation of the state of Israel.
As oppression forced Jews to flee all over the world, they often aligned themselves more with their respective nationalities than their Jewish faith. This was certainly true among Jews in Europe who were offered emancipation (equal citizenship with all other residents of a country) of all other in the 18th and 19th centuries (first seen in France in 1791). Many Jews lost sight of their ties to the holy land as they assimilated further into their countries culture.
That said, both Moses’ connection with his Jewish identity and the diaspora’s desire to return to the land of Israel never fully went away. As Moses witnesses an Egyptian slave master beat a Jewish slave, he kills the Egyptian before – as the Torah explains – he is even aware of his Jewish roots.
Well before the establishment of Israel, Jewish communities were returning to Israel. But, almost all European Jewish groups were left unsure of the true connection Jewish people had to Israel given the contradiction that lay between a supposed “promised land” and the exile they were facing.
In both the case of Moses and the diaspora, Jewish identity and connection to the land of Israel may have, for many, been completely forgotten. But, across all eras, Jews have never fully lost sight of their identity and ties to the land of Israel.
As Moses would heed God’s request via the burning bush, free the Jewish people, and lead them to the land of Israel, so, too, would Zionism allow for Israel to once again become, once more, the land most heavily populated by Jews in the world.
The Passover story and Israel are clearly linked by the ongoing trend of Jewish exile and defeat’s preceding a rediscovery and revival of ancient Jewish culture and modern Israeli life. But, by making connections between biblical and modern history does not intend to cast Israel or the current state of our people as messianic or separate from any other Jewish generation.
Contrarily, these connections allow us to better understand our people’s ongoing narrative so that today’s modern Jewish community can form an even stronger bond with both past, and future Jews that carry on holidays like Passover.
