Pesach, Freud and Jewish identity from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s Haggadah

            “Moses’ first question to God was mi anokhi, ‘who am I?”…Beneath the simple question of a child, “Why is this night different? is another deeper query: “Why is this people different?” or “Who am I?” We answer by telling a story – the story of our ancestors long ago, but also the story of which we are a part. Pesach is the festival of Jewish identity. It is the night on which we tell our children who they are.

            On a superficial reading of the Bible, Moses was asking, “Who am I to stand before Pharoah?… [a question] about his personal worthiness for such a mission…. 

There is, though, a deeper level at which Moses was indeed asking a question of identity. He faced a problem that has become acute wherever – in the Diaspora, even in the State of Israel itself – Jews have become part of a wider culture….

            Moses’ question, “Who am I?” was therefore … an existential crisis. Who was he and where did his destiny lie? Was he an Egyptian or an Israelite, a prince or a slave, a member of the ruling family of the greatest empire of the time, or part of a people moaning under oppression?

            …Almost the first words God says to him are ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, The God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ God is not, at this point, telling Moses who God is. That came later, in the famous and enigmatic words ‘I am who I am.’ Instead God is telling Moses who he – Moses – is: the child of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…

            In his innermost heart, Moses knew this…. More than identity is something we choose, it is something that chooses us….


haggadah Section: -- Four Questions
Source: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' Haggadah, 2006