This year more than most, the dialectical tension at the heart of the Passover story feels real.

The greens represent freshness and innocence, yet the salt water represents tears. The matzah represents freedom, and it reminds us, in every bite, that we know oppression, too, hard as we might try to repress it. You don’t get one without the other.

“Wherever you live, it’s probably Egypt,” said Michael Walzer, in Exodus and Revolution. And so that means that wherever you are, you’re also in the process of an exodus– maybe it’s a personal going-forth, maybe it’s extricating from a relationship no longer serving you, maybe it’s that you feel part of a collective group of people with vision marching toward something better. Whatever your exodus this year, may you persist in the hard work– the sweat and tears, the marror and salt water– and may you taste the hard-earned sweetness  of freedom and spaciousness on the other side.

Sending you Pesach love and liberation,

Rabbi Lizzi