And it came to pass at midnight

There is a common misconception that Passover is a celebration of freedom.

And yes, it is about the nation of Israel's delivery from slavery in ancient Egypt, and we do call it "Hag Haherut" (the Festival of Freedom), but more than anything it is a lesson in perspective and faith.

Unlike on Purim, where the holiday decreed by Queen Esther and Mordekhai takes place after the Jewish people have been allowed to successfully defend themselves from Haman's genocidal plot to wipe them out, the first Passover seder happened in the middle of the story, while God was still smiting Pharaoh with the plagues to make him release them from slavery.

At the time of that first Passover the people of Israel did not yet know whether they had been saved.

They had not tasted freedom in generations.

They were a battered, downtrodden enslaved people, sheltering in their homes, their doorposts daubed with lamb's blood as a sign that it was a Hebrew dwelling. Meanwhile the hand of death quite literally passed over their houses, smiting the Egyptians in the horrific last, devastating plague that finally convinced Pharaoh to release them from slavery and allow them to return to their ancient homeland.

I'm sure I'm not the only 21st century Israeli for whom this image came to mind last Saturday night, after the news that Iran's massive missile and drone onslaught was on its way to us.

A chill went through me as I imagined how my ancient ancestors must have felt living through that terrifying night all those thousands of years ago.

Here we were, about a week before Passover, in the thick of the traditional Pesah cleaning and preparation, instead sheltering in our homes close to our bomb shelters, waiting for that hand of death to pass over our country and God Willing be intercepted by Israel's layered anti-missile defences before it could wreak destruction.

Like our ancestors, we had no way of knowing how the night would end, whether with our salvation or our destruction. We were instructed to prepare as best we could, be near a shelter, have some emergency provisions, listen to the radio, but really, all we could do as ordinary civilians was sit in our homes and wait, knowing that some time in the middle of the night the missiles from Iran would likely be upon us.

All we had was faith, in our armed forces defending us, in God watching over us, in our knowledge that throughout history many have tried to wipe us out but the Jewish nation always survived, as we recite every year at the Passover seder in "Vehi She-amdah":

And this is what stood for our ancestors and for us

For not just one arose and tried to destroy us,

Rather in every generation there are those who rise up to destroy us,

And the Holy One, blessed be he, saves us from their hand.

It's a chilling concept: that our destiny in every generation is for someone to target us, because we are different, because we're in their way, because we refuse to adopt their beliefs or lifestyle, because we won't assimilate, because we did assimilate, because they are jealous that we have been successful and appear strong, because we are weak and so easy to scapegoat, because we look wrong, because they think us arrogant, because they think us humble... Somehow there is always a reason. Because we are the "Chosen People" - chosen apparently to face someone who hates us and wants to wipe us out in every generation.

As I've grown older though, I've come to see this declaration in a different way. Yes, it is a heavy burden to bear, being born into a nation that has experienced so much persecution throughout the ages. A nation where it's normal that so many generations have found it "normal" to have to wander from place to place, country to country, to face exile, expulsion and discrimination and on far too many occasions attempts to wipe us from the face of the earth.

But there is also a comfort in knowing that our ancestors have gone through this over and over again in many different circumstances, in many different eras, but despite this painful history, our nation still lives, we are still here to remember, to sit around the seder table with our families and retell the story from generation to generation.

Even at the very birth of our people we suffered so much, but just as God redeemed us from the horrors of slavery and Pharaoh's attempted genocide in Egypt, so we must always have hope that in each generation our people will prevail.


Sitting in my home awake in the small hours of that night, though, my thoughts inevitably turned to another piece of the Passover seder liturgy: "Vayehi Behatzi Halayla" (It Came to Pass at Midnight):

It happened at midnight:

You brought about many miracles at night.

At the beginning of the night watch

Why is this text included in the concluding songs of the seder? There is a passing reference to the smiting of the Egyptian firstborn during the Passover story, but otherwise this long poem is like an exegesis of "Vehi She'amda", expanding on that concept of divine redemption in every generation with a litany of episodes when biblical heroes and the nation of Israel were redeemed at midnight, concluding with the well known verse, later a popular Israeli folk song, "Karev Yom":

Bring near the day that is neither day nor night.

Most High, make known that Yours is the day as well as the night.

Appoint guards to protect Your city all day and all night.

Illuminate like day the darkness of night.

In the small hours of the night between the ending of Shabbat and the dawning of Sunday morning, that final verse - which always seemed like some distant future mystical prophecy after all those biblical events - suddenly felt breathtakingly immediate, real and concrete.

All over Israel that night was like day, people unable to sleep as we awaited our fate, watched the clock, wondered when and if those missiles and drones would hit.

All around was eerily still. Despite it being a Saturday night at the start of the school Passover holidays there were no teens out in the park, no one out late doing Passover errands, no bustle to be heard of neighbours getting in some late night Pesah preparations.

Some of us tried to catch up on Pesah cleaning or cooking. Some of us obsessively watched or listened to the news. Some of us prayed. Some of us tried to distract ourselves with music or films. But in every home in Israel we waited.

And then all at once it was upon us, wailing sirens all over eastern Israel, Red Alert app lighting up in a way we hadn't seen since the October 7th attacks. From north to south Israelis ran to shelters while those in more central areas tensed, listening and watching the eastern skies, waiting.

Our area was fortunate not to have sirens but through our open windows we heard the loud, thudding booms of interceptions that shook the night. Though it was hours from dawn, the eastern skies over Jerusalem were awash in bright lights that danced with surreal beauty in the sky, as though they were luminous natural aurora illuminating the cool spring night and not a grim battle for survival being waged high above us between the missiles of our air defence and the Iranian ICBMs bent on our destruction.

Bring near the day that is neither day nor night.

Most High, make known that Yours is the day as well as the night.

Appoint guards to protect Your city all day and all night.

Illuminate like day the darkness of night.

It was written in the vein of Isaiah's prophecies of comfort to the Jewish people, in hope that one day we would return from exile to restore our sacred city.

That night, this verse took on an entirely new meaning for me, as though it had been written for this very night. The salvation we witnessed in the skies over Jerusalem was simply another link in the very ancient chain going back to that first seder of our enslaved ancestors in Egypt, even further back to the life of our first ancestor, Avraham.

To my mind this is the crux of the seder, what all the storytelling is building up to. For all that the seder is about remembering the Exodus from Egypt, much of what we recount in the Haggadah service is about our suffering, from Lavan's persecution of Jacob through the hardships of slavery for his descendents.

In times of peace we need the seder to remind us where we have come from. To give us historical perspective and context, along with "hakarat hatov" - gratitude that Hashem rescued us from the misery of slavery - as the Haggadah itself says, if our ancestors had not been redeemed then we ourselves and our children would still be slaves.

We have to be able to see ourselves as slaves, to give ourselves insight into what our ancestors suffered, so that we are able to not only appreciate what we have, but to empathise with those who in this imperfect world still suffer.

In peace time the seder grounds us, ensures that we do not become decadent or detached from either our own history or the wider world around us, even if we belong to recent generations that have been fortunate to live in comfort and relative safety.

But in times of danger the seder is what gives us the resilience to stay strong and have faith in the midst of terrifying uncertainty.

At midnight with the hand of the destroyer overhead we truly do not know for sure what tomorrow will bring for us personally.

But we know that as a nation our ancestors were oppressed slaves at the mercy of a paranoid Pharaoh, a people who seemed doomed to oblivion as this Egyptian king embarked on a genocidal campaign of drowning our first born males, a sure path to assimilate our nation and destroy it.

We know that God saved us then and ever since has ensured that, come what may, the Jewish people live and thrive.

And through the seder we also remember generations of Jews before us who commemorated the seder in difficult, frightening, sad times.

Despite our deliverance a few days ago from one of the many threats around us today, we are very much still at midnight. There is war to the north and the south. Hamas and Hizballah remain a threat. We still face daily short range rockets from Gaza and Lebanon. 133 hostages are still held by Hamas in Gaza.

I know many Israelis and many Jews around the world feel that in the face of all these the idea of the Festival of Freedom this year feels tone deaf. How can we sit at the seder this year knowing that 133 kidnapped from Israel are still captive? How can we feel festive surrounded by so many freshly bereaved families, so many new orphans and widows and thousands of wounded? How can we sit down to a holiday table with the hand of the destroyer still hanging over us?

And yet this is precisely what the seder is, what the seder was from the very beginning.

That very first seder commemorated by our slave ancestors in Egypt was not a "celebration". It was not a party. It was determined resilience in the face of Pharaoh's persecution.

It was defiance.

It was faith.

It was hope.

May we all merit experiencing not only midnight, not only dawn, but the bright light of day to come.