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The Story of Passover
Contributed by Lou Santini

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Joseph and his brothers died, and the children of Israel multiplied in the land of Egypt. Soon after, King Pharaoh also died, and a new king ascended the throne. He had no sympathy and love for the children of Israel, and chose to forget all that Joseph had done for Egypt.

He decided to take action against the influence and growing numbers of the children of Israel. He called his council together, and they advised him to enslave these people and oppress them before they grew too powerful.

Pharaoh embarked upon a policy of limiting the personal freedom of the Hebrews, putting heavy taxes on them, and recruiting their men into forced labor battalions under the supervision of harsh taskmasters.

The children of Israel were forced to build cities, erect monuments, construct roads, work in the quarries, and hew stones or burn bricks and tiles.

But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, and the harder became the restrictions imposed upon them, the more the children of Israel increased and multiplied.

Finally, when King Pharaoh saw that forcing the Hebrews to do hard work did not succeed in suppressing their growing numbers, he decreed that all newly born male children of the Hebrews be thrown into the Nile River. Only daughters should be permitted to live.

Thus he hoped to end the numerical increase of the Jewish population, and at the same time, to eliminate a danger which, according to the predictions of his astrologers, threatened his own life in the person of a leader to be born to the children of Israel.

A Levite woman conceived and bore a son and hid him for three months. After that time, she prepared a wicker basket and laid the child in the basket and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile River. The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile and saw the basket among the reeds and had her slave girl fetch the basket. The Pharaoh's daughter took pity on the child and made him her own son. She named him Moses, explaining, "I drew him out of water."

Moses grew and had learned of his Hebrew heritage. After witnessing an Egyptian beating an Israelite, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. When Pharaoh learned of the matter, he sought to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh. He arrived in the land of Midian, where he married his wife, Zipporah.

A long time had gone by and the king of Egypt died. The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out to God. God remembered his Covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He heard their cries. God appeared to Moses in a burning bush, telling him that he would use Moses to lead his people out of Egypt into a land "flowing with milk and honey" So Moses returned to Egypt and took the rod of God with him.

Moses and his brother Aaron went to the Pharaoh to ask for the release of their people. But the Pharaoh's heart was hardened against the Israelites and would not release them from the bondage of slavery. Each time the Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites go, the land of Egypt came under a great plague. These are the plagues that were brought upon Egypt:
haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story

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