From narrow straits to miracles

One could argue that never before has the etymology of the Hebrew word for Egypt (mitzrayim) been so eerily resonant. Mitzrayim stems both from the meaning of “narrow” and “travail.” Our people’s enslavement was physical, chaining us to torturous labor, and psycho-communal, forcing us into the most narrow and burdensome of existences. And so the expanse promised by emerging from the birth waters of the split sea was not just the absence of taskmasters, but the presence of space. Space to breathe. Space to speak. Space to live and work and pray.

We are, heading into Pesach, in painfully narrow straits. Our existences have been circumscribed. Even those who have the blessing of a roof over our heads are experiencing a version of imprisonment. And no matter the square footage of one’s abode and the strength of one’s WiFi and the upgraded status of one’s Zoom account, the walls seem to be closing in. I pray, first, that we pray. Because prayer is an act of spiritual resistance. Prayers can’t magically alter the reality of the world but they may utterly and humbly alter our response to that world. And I pray that we keep the open wilderness, to which this crucible, this Egypt, will eventually yield, in our mind’s eye. This enslavement will take lives, as all slaveries do. And it also will submit to the life force we have within us individually and communally and globally. That is our promised land. We march forward.
—Rabbi Adam Kligfeld, Temple Beth Am


haggadah Section: Urchatz