Passover, Memory, and What Liberation Demands of Us Now

Every year at Passover, I return to a story written by my great uncle, Josef “Jupp” Weiss.

It is not a story told around a comfortable table.

It is a story of a Seder in 1945, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

I carry that story not just as memory, but as instruction.

If the lesson of Passover is liberation, then it cannot be selective.

If the lesson of our history is survival, then it cannot come at the cost of another people’s survival.

And if we remember what it means to be dehumanized, then we are obligated to resist that dehumanization wherever it appears.

Memory, on its own, is not enough.

What matters is what we do with it.

I wrote more about this, and about what this story asks of us now.

Follow this link to read more.