Oasis Songs: Musings from Rav D
Friday, April 11, 2025 / 13 Nisan Sheni 5785
Summary: I am sending next week’s column today as it may offer some useful questions for your Passover Seder.
Reading Time: Four minutes
What Needs to Be Saved
Although the central themes of Passover are freedom, redemption, and the covenant between God and the Jewish people, other ideas always filter in. The intense level of preparation for the holiday invites us to reflect on what needs to be saved—and what can be let go.
We bring out the boxes of dishes, haggadot, and pots and pans from where thy have been stored all year. In the process of deep cleaning the house, we confront how much stuff accumulates over time. In a year when my family is preparing to move, the question of what to keep, what to toss, and what to give away has become especially real.
The Seder, by contrast, is an act of continuity. New questions join old ones; layers of meaning, added across millennia, grant the holiday both richness and relevance. As each household prepares, this issue of relevance becomes urgent: since the Seder is a time for asking questions, what are the questions we most need to ask this year?
For some families, the past three months have brought profound change to America. Federal agencies have been gutted, tens of thousands have lost their jobs, and many longstanding norms of government have been upended. Many American Jews—especially those who align with the Democratic party—are asking how deeply freedom and democracy have been harmed. They may connect Pharaoh’s totalitarian rule to parallels in our own time.
There’s nothing wrong with that approach, particularly if everyone at the table shares a similar worldview. But it also has its downsides. Many families are politically diverse, often seeing the world through very different stories. That can make family discussions uncomfortable, divisive, or even unproductive. More importantly, while the Passover narrative is a story of political liberation, that’s not all it is.
Even after the seders are over, it may be helpful to frame the remainder of the holiday, as well as this season, around a broader set of questions. Specifically: what should American Jews be focusing on in this time of rapid change and rising antisemitism?
An ancient midrash helps us explore this through the lens of continuity by querying why the Israelites merited redemption, wondering what made them worthy of freedom?
It’s not a frivolous question. Though all people deserve freedom, history is filled with those who never taste it—who died enslaved, broken, or worse, losing all sense of who they were.
Sefer Meturgaman (1541) answers the midrashic question by noting that the Israelites were redeemed because they kept three things intact—their names, their clothing, and their language.
A simplistic religious view would say these three things were simply pleasing to God. But even if that is true, it still does not explain why they mattered so much.
We can’t know God’s mind. But we can reflect on how name, clothing, and language continue to sustain us—and guide us toward freedom and growth. Together, they root us in a Jewish identity strong enough to withstand the storms of life. When we are anchored in a solid sense of self, we can endure nearly any challenge.
Bondage, after all, is not just physical: it can distort our sense of self. We can start to identify more with our taskmasters than with our own people and stories.
That is why names matter so much. A name holds our deepest sense of self. It’s no accident we perk up when someone says our name. Like an incantation, it calls us to be fully present.
Clothing, too, can mark identity. Our city is filled with tattooed individuals—and ink, in its permanence, becomes a form of self-definition. Most people I know who have tattoos feel they tell a story. While American Jews may no longer have distinct everyday clothing, like traditional garb, we still rely on physical markers of identity: a kippah, a tallit, a mezuzah on the door. These tangible signs remind us that we are part of an ancient people who have endured and thrived under even the harshest circumstances.
And then there is language. We are, at our core, storytellers. Our tradition says God created the world with words. Few American Jews speak fluent Hebrew; more can read or “decode” the words of the prayerbook. Even for those who don’t understand it, the sound of Hebrew still brings comfort. It connects us to our ancestors and our heritage. A people that loses its language begins to lose its culture.
Our name, our clothing, our language.
In a time of sweeping change, when the very idea of continuity feels fragile, we are invited to consider:
How will we strengthen our Jewish identities?
When everything feels up for grabs—
what needs to be saved?
Shabbat Shalom,
Rav D
Shabbat Table Talk
Please consider using the embedded questions as a jumping off point for a worthwhile discussion.
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