A significant aspect of the Passover seder is not only the recitation of the exodus from Egypt but the affective outcome of causing yourself and your children to feel as if they themselves were leaving Egypt today. In other words, Judaism not only expects those around the seder table to understand the historical narrative of slavery but the rituals and goals of the Passover seder are meant to help us feel as if we ourselves were recently slaves.

Almost twenty years ago, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, a senior clergy at Central Synagogue in Manhattan, shared a memory of her family Seder in Tacoma, Washington. In her home, her family substituted Kimchee, her Korean mother’s favorite dish for Horseradish (Maror) on their seder plate.

One year my mother put kimchee, a spicy, pickled cabbage condiment, on our Seder plate. My Korean mother thought it was a reasonable substitution since both kimchee and horseradish elicit a similar sting in the mouth, the same clearing of the nostrils. She also liked kimchee on gefilte fish and matzo. ‘Kimchee just like maror, but better,’ she said. I resigned myself to the fact that we were never going to be a ‘normal’ Jewish family.

In the aftermath of the wave of violence against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community culminating in the tragic shooting in Atlanta last Tuesday, Rabbi Buchdahl returned to this same memory. She wrote:

I now fear for my strong but tiny Korean mother when she goes out for a walk alone. I look back at the indignities, condescension, and discrimination that have been a part of her daily life as an immigrant, and I realize that my mother too, lived in a narrow place — her mitzrayim. Her bitterness just tasted different than mine. So this year, for the first time since childhood, I will be putting kimchee back on my seder plate. Because as long as my mother is still in a kind of Egypt, I am, too. The greatest religious mandate of this holiday is to remember, in every generation, what it feels like to be a stranger. And the force of that memory commands empathy and even love for the stranger, for we know the soul of a stranger. We left Egypt an erev rav — a “mixed multitude.” The motley band who fled was a diverse group, joined not by one color, but one dream: liberation. We remain a mixed multitude today, and we know the promise of redemption must be for everyone.

In my home and many other North African Jewish homes, we have a practice of beginning our Passover Seder with the following phrase recited in repetition. “Yesterday we were slaves in Egypt, today we are free.” While that verse is recited, the plate with Matza (the bread of affliction) on it, is circled around the head of each member of our household three times (here is a slightly comical reenactment from the popular Israeli show “Zaguri Empire”). I was always told that the reason why we circle the bread of poverty around our heads is to represent the cycle of poverty and oppression. Today, we are free and we are able to celebrate our Passover seder with relative freedom, but who knows when the cycle of history will rear its ugly head and we will be oppressed again or find ourselves in poverty.

It is clear, as Rabbi Buchdahl writes, that there are too many people in America who feel like strangers today. The Jewish experience has made us keenly aware of what it feels like to be strangers. So this year, I too will be adding Kimchee to my Passover seder because at this moment the voice of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community is crying out proclaiming the suffering and their feelings of being strangers. In the Jewish community, we need to understand that the imperative to feel like we just left Egypt is not only for the purpose of remembering our own persecution but is intended to cultivate a sense of righteousness towards those who feel like strangers in our midst. As the Torah records in Sefer Shemot: “You shall not wrong the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”.

As we leave Egypt, let's ensure that we are able to bring the entire Asian American and Pacific Islander community with us.

Adam