Every year we are challenged at Passover by the phrase בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים, to look at ourselves as if we ourselves came out of Egypt. In some Sephardic and Mizrachi traditions, seder guests actually get dressed up and replicate the Exodus, arriving at the seder as guests who have just fled Egypt and are in need of food, shelter and camaraderie. In David Moss’s beautiful Haggadah, this page has a mirror embedded in the page, so that the reader can see their own reflection and contemplate how they might replicate, in some way, the experience of the Exodus.

It's not so easy, though, to truly put ourselves into the shoes (more likely sandals) of our ancestors. However, for some in our community, fleeing a place for a better life is in fact part of their lived experience. Be it Jewish refugees from Ukraine or Holocaust survivors, the Jewish story continues to involve people moving from one place to another, often in a hurry and with limited personal goods, to seek safety and security.

I often marvel at the fact that as a Canadian-born Millenial, I have been born into the greatest place and time in Jewish history to be a  Jew. Even with recent upticks in Antisemitism in Canada, I still deeply believe this to be true. As we sit down to our Seders, give thought to how we ended up here, in Canada in 2023, in safety and security. Even if we can’t project ourselves back to the generation of the Exodus, we can likely re-live – either from our own lived experiences or those of our recent ancestors – the journeys that were taken to arrive at this place, a society were we can sit down to Seder in peace, comfort and celebration. Hag Kasher V’Sameah.