for Passover
i
Joseph's brothers cast Joseph into the pit.
Travelling merchants pick him up
and bring him down to Egypt
and sell him into slavery there.
That is the story
of how Joseph becomes Egypt's first Israelite slave.
*
Falling into the pit
is the last Joseph sees of his brothers,
of his father’s house,
for twenty years.
Then twenty years go by
and Israel follows Joseph into Egypt
and settles in Egypt
and later becomes a slave-people there.
*
When God frees the people from Egypt, God says:
On the night that freedom comes,
eat Passover meals
household by household.
ii
Family is the interwovenness of people
but Joseph enters slavery all alone,
a lone item to be sold or owned.
Perhaps to say: Family is the interwovenness of people
but slaves are lone commodities.
So slavery and family are opposites.
*
Thus a break in a family brings slavery
and when slavery ends,
families eat together:
family comes back.
iii
What follows from all this
is the answer to the question
“What is freedom?”
Not the power to do what you like
but the closeness of many people,
bound together.
___
Chag Kasher V'Sameach,
Abe