None of you shall exit the door of their home until morning.

On the one hand it is ironic that here in Israel the entire country will spend Pesah, the festival of freedom, on lockdown, forbidden even to leave our homes as a precaution to prevent those who despite the situation might otherwise try to gather with family and friends for the festive seder meal on the first night.

And yet staying put in our homes with our immediate families is exactly what God commanded our ancestors on the very first Passover before He led them out of slavery in Egypt, as it is described in the book of Exodus:

וּלְקַחְתֶּ֞ם אֲגֻדַּ֣ת אֵז֗וֹב וּטְבַלְתֶּם֮ בַּדָּ֣ם אֲשֶׁר־בַּסַּף֒ וְהִגַּעְתֶּ֤ם אֶל־הַמַּשְׁקוֹף֙ וְאֶל־שְׁתֵּ֣י הַמְּזוּזֹ֔ת מִן־הַדָּ֖ם אֲשֶׁ֣ר בַּסָּ֑ף וְאַתֶּ֗ם לֹ֥א תֵצְא֛וּ אִ֥ישׁ מִפֶּֽתַח־בֵּית֖וֹ עַד־בֹּֽקֶר׃

And you shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin; and none of you shall exit the door of their home until morning.

Of all the Jewish holidays, Pesah is the one most focused on the home and the family. The key commemoration is not a public event like the Yom Kippur service, not a public declaration of the miracle, like the lighting of the Hannukiah in the window, not building a hut in our gardens or parading with the lulav in shul or loudly blowing the shofar.

Even in the time of the Temple in Jerusalem, the pascal lamb sacrifice, a key Pesah mitzva at that time, was something to be done as a family unit, maximum a large extended family or a few families together, but at its heart it was a commemoration celebrated in private, at home or in the temporary lodgings where pilgrims to Jerusalem were staying.

Of all the Jewish festivals to have to fall during this time of isolation and lockdown there is something fitting about this crisis happening over Pesah.

The pandemic is forcing us to go back to basics, to focus on one of the fundamental messages of Pesah, the strength of family in the face of a tyrannical regime, the strength of family during times of extreme hardship and fear. The family drawing in on itself behind closed doors to find solace and inspiration while plague and uncertainty rage outside.

Today of course most of us live in nuclear family units rather than with or even close to our extended families. The dangers of this contagion mean that we are forced to hunker down without our parents or grandparents, to keep them sequestered alone for their own safety. It runs counter to everything in our culture, but we have no choice. This seder will truly be different from all other seder nights.

Pesah is a festival on which we not only remember the suffering of our ancestors, remembering the commandment that we must all consider ourselves as actually having gone from slavery to freedom, to tell the story not just as a fable or an episode of history, but with profound empathy as though we ourselves had experienced those horrific times, to feel as though we were slaves in ancient Egypt, just as our ancestors were, facing their trials and tribulations.

It is also a holiday on which we remember many miracles within nature, the plagues which Hashem brought down on Egypt and the splitting of the Red Sea. In modern times we try to understand these through science, how a certain wind blowing could cause the sea to part, or a volanic eruption might have caused clouds of dust and ash which plunged the region in to darkness.

Explaining miracles through science does nothing to diminish them, we believe that Hashem created the world and all that is in it, including the laws of nature.

This Pesah we pray that Hashem will guide our dedicated scientists, doctors and researchers to find a cure for the plague now sweeping the globe. We hope that there will be a new life saving Passover miracle this year that will enable the whole world to go from fear to freedom, from sickness to health, from isolation to togetherness.