By: Michael Rosenthal, Rosh Chinuch Kineret Tnuat Noar
Pesach is one of the most important holidays for the Jewish people. Every fourteenth night of Nisan in the Pesach Seder, we remember how God freed us from slavery in Egypt. And this is precisely what Pesach is all about—freedom. And every year, we sit around the Seder table, we eat matza, sing, drink wine and commemorate this holiday. Even so, over time, we, the youths, lose interest in the story of Pesach. Every year we have to repeat the Seder and hear the same old story. How do we make Pesach more relevant for
teenagers and young adults? The answer lies within the Haggadah itself:
“In every generation, each human being must see himself or herself as if he or she personally experienced the Exodus from Egypt.”
What does this order from the Haggadah mean? It means that each one of us carries an Egypt within. We are always slaves to something, whether it is money, technology or work. And for us young people, this slavery is even more significant since many of us are slaves to restlessness. At this age emerge many questions that are nurtured by society. Questions like, “What will I do with my life when I finish school?”, “Am I pretty enough?”, “What are my priorities at this moment?”
These questions will accompany us for the rest of our lives, but similarly to the Pesach story, we all need a Moshe to free us from our internal Egypt. The role of this Moshe is to help us stop being slaves to what torments us; it can be by helping us put our iPhone aside for a moment or helping us answer our day-to-day questions. And as youths, one of the best “Moshes” that we can have is the tnua. The tnua can help us grow as people and free us year after year from Egypt. It can help us understand what our priorities and passions are and how to use them to make the world a better place every day.
I invite you all to meditate this Pesach about what or who is our Egypt and how it limits us, and search for a Moshe to help us free ourselves from our internal Egypt, in order to get closer to our Eretz Israel, our inner peace.
Chag Sameach, everyone.
