I was there
“In every generation a person must see himself as if they had come out of Egypt”.
That’s what the Haggadah says. The Pesach story isn’t merely an ancient event involving our ancestors, but a personal experience in which we ourselves took part.
We were there.
We were enslaved in Egypt, we yearned to break free, we followed Moses out of bondage. That’s why the Haggadah praises God who redeemed us as well as our ancestors.
Not only our forebears but we ourselves emerged from serfdom to freedom, from darkness to daylight, from subjugation to selfhood.
This explains why even those who were born long after 1945 are Holocaust survivors who feel the pain and rejoice in the deliverance.
Don’t imagine that anyone is trying to minimise the horrors of the Holocaust years, but it shows that no Jew is ever a latter-day bystander.
If he was not Abraham himself, he lived with Abraham in that generation. He was Moses or Moses’ contemporary.
When someone asks how old I am, I can’t answer in years. I am a Jew, as ancient as history.
If someone asks how long I expect to live, I can’t hazard a guess as to my life expectancy.
I am a Jew, and a Jew lives until history is no more.
If I am Abraham or Moses I could also be the Messiah. It might depend on me as to whether mankind will reach redemption.
