“In every generation, each person is obligated to see themselves as if they personally left Egypt” — The Haggadah

This Passover, my family celebrated apart. The war with Iran made travel difficult, and so I stayed in New York while my parents, my sisters and their families were scattered across Israel. We did not sit together at one table. In New York, Passover arrives without the stillness I grew up with, the city does not pause, and the holiday must be held from the inside. We read the same Haggadah, sang the same songs, and asked the same questions. For the first Passover since October 7, we felt whole again.

The day before Passover, we celebrated my niece Alma’s third birthday, the first she has ever shared with her father, Omri Miran. He was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023, from his home in front of my sister Lishay and their two baby daughters, Roni and Alma. Alma was six months old, too young for words, too young for memory, too young to understand what had been taken from her. She spent her first two birthdays in a world that contained his photograph but not his voice, his image but not his arms. This year, he was there to hold her. She will carry........

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