Passover 2026
It seems so quaint now,Â
The ritual of dipping our pinkies into the wine to remove a few drops of joy.
In memory of the Egyptians, we said
As we recited, in a bored monotone, the list of horrors visited upon the people when their leader’s heart grew hard
Dam, tzfardaya, kinim…..
Maybe it helped us feel less guilty
Here we were celebrating our freedom while others suffered —
Our freedom, always at someone else’s expense.
Eyeing one another, we licked our fingers anyway
Why let good wine go to waste?
Arov, dever, shekhin…
What would happen if we really looked at the nameless Egyptians?
The ones whose source of water became polluted and undrinkable because the God King didn’t believe in global warming?
Or the ones whose crops failed because disease was allowed to spread rampant despite the decades of accumulated science that could stop it?
Or the ones whose children, the firstborn of their hearts, the beloved ones they waited for, were sacrificed to a war they didn’t choose?
Barad, Arbeh, Hoshekh…
What if we looked and saw ourselves in the faces of the charioteers, the ones hurtling toward destiny, pushed on by the egos of men who refuse to see the wall of raging water rising up before us.
Could we remove enough wine to make our joy palatable?
While children sit in cages and families are torn apart?
While cities are demolished and entire communities are destroyed?
No, there is no cup of redemption this year.
Not now,
Not while the world burns and the pharaohs we put in place laugh their way to the edge of the sea.
Makkat Bekhorot…
This year, we pray that someday someone will tell the story and remember our feeble attempts at justice. And they will remove drops of wine to lessen their joy.
Or maybe they will just spill out the whole damn thing.
