We, the Jews, make quite a big deal of the Passover holiday. According to one Pew Research survey, the Seder (a ritualized meal in which we retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt and the beginning of our journey to the Land of Israel) is the Jewish practice that is celebrated the most by American Jews, more than lighting Shabbat candles or fasting on Yom Kippur. To the best of my knowledge, the widespread and well-loved nature of the Seder extends to other Jewish communities in the Diaspora as well. And in Israel, roughly nine out of every ten Jews attends a seder.

So we like this holiday. And we make a point of commemorating it. Many think of Passover as a holiday of liberation. But as we say in the Haggadah, “Now we are here; next year in the land of Israel. Now we are slaves, next year, we shall be free.” And we say it in Aramaic, no less! The prototypical language of Diasporic Judaism. So much for freedom. The Seder has come to mean not merely freedom, but rather the aspiration of freedom. And hope endures. Long past the slavery and long past the emancipation, hope endures.

But hope of what? The story’s there in black and white in Exodus 12, and it’s only tangentially about freedom. The word, such as it is, doesn’t appear there. Sure, the text tells us that God took us out of Egypt. But it wasn’t an act of liberation. It was an act of commitment.

This is the first time that the Torah uses the term “Edat Yisrael”—translated as “community,” “congregation,” or “ethnicity” of Israel, take your pick. The Israelites of Egypt were no longer just the Sons of Israel, a familial and tribal moniker, but rather something larger as well. Behold, we were now one thing: a people.........

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