Happy Passover!

THE STORY OF PASSOVER

Passover is a time for storytelling, where at each seder meal Jewish people all over the world retell the story of our exodus from Egypt. Here’s the Artists Against Antisemitism version….

Let’s start with our biblical forefather Jacob, who is also known as Israel. He had twelve sons: Rueben, Simeon, Levi, Napthali, Isachaar, Asher, Gad, Zebulun, Dan, Benjamin, and Jacob. Through a series of events, Joseph became an advisor to the Egyptian Pharoah because he was great an interpreting dreams. When that happened, his dad and all his brothers moved to Egypt and the Jewish people enjoyed the protection of the Pharoah. But then he died, and it was not good news for the Jews.

The new Pharoah decided he was afraid the Jewish people were getting too powerful and too plentiful, so he enslaved them all. (Historical word is they were some of the slaves who helped build the Egyptian pyramids.) The Jewish people kept having babies anyway, and needless to say, the Pharoah was not a fan of that. He wanted fewer Jewish people, not more. Plus, his stargazers told him that the savior of the Jewish people would die in water—meaning that there was going to be a savior of the Jewish people, which is also did not like.

So he came up with a plan: he summoned the two Jewish midwives to his court and told them to kill all newborn Jewish males. The midwives did not do this. The Pharoah got really mad and told them to cast all Jewish baby boys into the Nile.

In the meantime, a woman named Yocheved gave birth to a baby boy some months early. Because of that, she was able to conceal him and raise him for a few months in secret. Once his due date arrived, she she built a waterproof cradle for him, wrapped him in blankets, and set him off floating in the Nile. His older sister Miriam hid in the reeds near the river to keep an eye on him.

And then something pretty amazing happened. The Pharoah’s daughter came to bathe in the Nile and found the little floating bundle. She knew this was probably a Jewish baby boy, but she didn’t came. She was a compassionate person, and this baby was alone and crying. So she took him to the palace and named him Moses, which means “he who was drawn from the water.” Miriam popped out of the reeds and told the princess that she could find a wet nurse for the baby, which was Yocheved, so Yocheved got to raise her son in the palace.

After a while, Moses grew up and left the palace. Once out in the regular world, he was horrified to see the Egyptian treatment of their Jewish slaves. When he saw an Egyptian man beating a Jewish slave horribly, he tried to stop him and ended up killing him. When he realized what he’d done, he ran away, rescued the daughter of a pagan priest, married her, and became a shepherd.

While shepherding around, he saw a bush burning. And then he heard a voice telling him to go to Pharoah and tell him to “Let my people go so that they may serve me.” Long story slightly less long, Moses and his brother Aaron went to talk to Pharoah, who not only refused to let the Jewish people go, but made life even harder for them.

Moses heard from G-d again and G-d told him that to let the Pharoah know that if he doesn’t let the Jewish people free, ten plagues will be visited upon the Egyptians. The Pharoah declines, so first, the Nile waters are turned to blood, then frogs swarmed over the land, lice infested all men and beasts, hordes of wild animals invaded the cities, a pestilence killed all domestic animals, painful boils afflicted the Egyptians, hail descended from the skies, and then—when the Pharoah still said no—swarms of locusts devoured all the crops, and an inky black darkness enveloped the land.

Still Pharoah says no, so G-d tells all the Jewish people—also known at the time as Israelites—to slaughter a lamb and mark their homes with its blood, so that when he comes to slay all the first born Egyptian at the strike of midnight on the 15th day of the Hebrew month if Nissan, G-d will know to “pass over” the Jewish homes. That last plague, the death of the first born, finally got the Pharoah to agree to let the Jewish people go. They did so hastily, and threw their bread dough on their backs, not even taking time to let it rise. It baked as they walked in the hot sun, which is how we got matzah.

Not long after the Israelites departed from Egypt, the Pharoah changed his mind and sent his army to follow after them and return them to Egypt. At this point, the Israelites had reached the Red Sea. G-d told Moses to raise his staff so the sea will part for the Israelites, which he does, and it does. The Jewish people started walking through the space between, and the Egyptian armies followed, but as they did, the water came rushing back and killed the soldiers.

The Jewish people made it across, and Miriam, Moses’s sister from way back in our story, leads the women in a dance of celebration as they march to the promised land.