Leaving Mitzrayim in an uncertain time

As Pesach approaches each year, Jewish families gather around their Seder tables and proclaim the festival to be Zman Cherutenu, the time of our freedom. We retell the ancient story of our ancestors leaving Egypt and remind ourselves that the defining narrative of the Jewish people is the journey from slavery to liberation.

But this year, those words feel more complicated.

The Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, shares its root with meitzar, a narrow place, a place of constriction. In the Torah, it names a geography, but in Jewish memory, it has always meant something more. Mitzrayim is what it feels like when the horizon narrows, when the future feels uncertain, and the path forward unclear.

Many Jews today recognise that feeling.

The trauma of the past years has been relentless. Since the horrors of October 7, Jewish life has felt like it is living through a prolonged emotional earthquake. Israeli society has stood at its epicentre, while Jews in the Diaspora have felt the aftershocks in ways both visible and subtle.

The war in Gaza, the hostages and their gradual return have left deep scars, etched into families, communities and the collective consciousness of the Jewish people.

Those scars are still being formed as the conflict widens. Israel, alongside the United States, now confronts Iran and the forces it has positioned across the region. Israelis are living with the reality of sustained missile attacks.

Sirens sound across cities and towns, sending families running for shelter at all hours of the day and night. Millions live with the knowledge that they may have only seconds to find safety before the next strike. Conversations stop mid-sentence. Parents scoop up their children and run. And then, somehow, life resumes.

But the sense of living in a narrow moment is not confined to Israel.

Here in Australia, Jewish communities are still carrying the shock of the attack in Bondi and the months that followed. There have been public conversations, political debates and formal inquiries, all of which matter deeply. Yet many people quietly acknowledge that something in the atmosphere has shifted. The sense of security that once felt instinctive now feels more fragile.

Across the ocean, a recent terror attack on a synagogue in Detroit served as another sobering reminder of how vulnerable Jewish life can be. Thank God lives were spared, but the image of yet another synagogue under attack reverberated far beyond Michigan. It reminded Jews everywhere that even in places where Jewish communities have flourished for generations, safety can never be entirely taken for granted.

And so we arrive at Pesach, the festival that asks us to celebrate freedom while many of us feel as though we are still living in a kind of Mitzrayim.

Shabbat HaGadol, which we have just marked, invites us to pause on that threshold. Traditionally a time of preparation, it asks not only whether our homes are ready for Pesach, but whether we are ready to tell its story honestly, in the world as it is.

Jewish tradition does not pretend that liberation is simple. The story of the Exodus does not move neatly from suffering to serenity. The Israelites leave Egypt, but their freedom leads them into the wilderness, into forty years of wandering, uncertainty and struggle as they learn how to live as a free people.

Perhaps that is the deeper lesson of Pesach. Freedom has never meant the absence of fear or uncertainty. It has meant refusing to allow those things to define the future.

And so Jewish life does what it has always done in moments like this. We prepare.

Across communities around the world, people are gathering to learn the rituals of the Seder, to practise the songs of the festival and to help children discover the story they will soon retell around their family tables. There is nothing remarkable about this. Jewish communities have always prepared in this way.

Perhaps that is the quiet miracle of Jewish life. Even when the world feels narrow, we keep moving.

Many of us will sit at our seders this year carrying mixed emotions. Gratitude and worry, pride and exhaustion, hope and anxiety will all sit together at the table. And that is alright.

The story of Pesach was never meant to belong only to people who feel certain about the future. It belongs just as much to those who are still finding their way through the wilderness.

The story we tell on Pesach is called Yetziat Mitzrayim, the going out from Egypt. Not simply leaving a place on a map, but finding a way out of a narrow moment.

And so even now we set the table, pour the wine and open the door for Elijah.

Because Jewish history has taught us something stubborn and remarkable. We do not wait for freedom to arrive before we prepare for it.

Rabbi Gersh Lazarow is the founding rabbi of Shtiebel, an independent Jewish community in Melbourne dedicated to openness, belonging and the belief that every person should be empowered to “do Jewish their way”.