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When Moses led the Jewish people out of Egypt, they broke the physical chains of bondage. In 2022, it's time to break the mental ones. To truly celebrate our freedom, we must honor those traditions that so many fought to keep alive. We must celebrate the re-establishment of the homeland and hope for the future of the Jewish people.
This may sound obvious, and yet, sadly, it's not. This is a time of rising antisemitism. Jews today are subject to threats from the Left and the Right. And sadly, some within our own community have chained themselves to an ideology that demeans them and denies them the right to their own story.
Anti-Zionism is on the rise within the progressive and Left-wing spaces of the Jewish community. It's widening the gap between Jews in the diaspora and Jews in Israel. And it's causing too many American Jews to feel the need to apologize for our survival.
The story of Passover is not only a story of Jewish liberation, but that of a dream now realized. As Jews around the world say "next year in Jerusalem," we must remember what it means to be able to live as a free people in our land.
Facing increasing Jew-hate, this Passover is the time to liberate ourselves from the mental bondage that we have chained ourselves to in the diaspora. It is time to reclaim our own narrative and reconnect with our people as a nation.
It will not be easy. I recently read about a synagogue that proudly declares itself anti-Zionist, editing "Justice, justice you shall pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that Adonai your G-d is giving you" so that it fits into an ideology that is hostile to Jews.
Adopting an anti-Zionist stance is not righteous. It's virtue signaling. It's denying half of the world's Jewish population the right to live in their homeland.
It's not just anti-Zionism though. In ways large and small, Jews are asked to check our peoplehood at the door of progressive spaces. We're asked to denounce our fellow Jews for not being progressive enough, or to denounce the country where half of our brothers and sisters live.
Instead of checking our identity at the door and paying the cost of acceptance into groups that wish us harm, we need to proudly embrace our traditions and heritage as the light unto the nations.
What better act of solidarity is there than standing proudly with our Jewish sisters and brothers around the world and proclaiming Am Yisrael Chai, the people of Israel lives?
Now is not the time to shy away from Jewishness. It is not the time to be ashamed of accomplishments, or apologize for traditions that have kept the Jewish people alive through genocides, expulsions, and forced conversions for millennia.
We should not be ashamed of what is arguably the most successful Indigenous people's movements in modern times. There should be no apologies for surviving attempts to eradicate our people and maintaining the spiritual practices of our ancestors. Those accomplishments and traditions should be celebrated.
This Passover, we should ask ourselves, what could be a more liberatory act of decolonization than reclaiming our culture that so many have tried to destroy? We tell our children the story of Exodus not only to honor the liberation of our ancestors, but also to remember it is necessary to continuously work for our liberation.
There are many who have worked toward Jewish liberation since Moses. Our modern struggle for liberation is inspired by the linguistic decolonization that Hemda and Eliezar Ben Yehuda worked toward by reconnecting Jewish people to the Hebrew language.
We look to Baruch Tegegne whose dedication to the liberation of Ethiopian Jews embodied the 2000 year old hope for our people to return to Zion.
Jews who today make Aliyah and return home stand on the shoulders of the Iraqi Zionist Underground which fought against Islamist antisemitism that relegated Jews to second-class citizenship.
As we face rising antisemitism fueled by illiberalism, we admire Natan Sharansky, who dedicated his life to deliverance of Soviet Jewry and struggle for democratic ideals.
In current times, we are experiencing challenges to our freedom, challenges that are coming from those who seek to destroy us physically and who encourage us to self-destruct. Jews are being attacked and killed in the streets of Western democracies. We are being silenced in centers of learning, slandered and shouted down when we speak up. Centuries old tropes are being weaponized in a manner that threatens our survival.
And once again, it seems as though we are alone in the fight against the world's oldest hatred.
This Passover, I will sit at the Seder with my family, following traditions that millions have kept, and rejoice that our people live free. I encourage you to join me.
Brandy Shufutinsky is a social worker, writer, researcher, and advocate.
The views in this article are the writer's own.
