My mind is now beginning to refocus on Passover.  The first Seder is just a week from Monday. Before we all know it, we will be gathered around tables with our families retelling our Jewish people’s narrative.  This past week, I was with my nineteen other Large City Federation colleagues at our annual retreat.  We began with Jewish study led by Rabbi Lauren Berkun of the Shalom Hartman Institute (of course, there is a Pittsburgh connection -  Lauren is married to the son of Tree of Life’s Rabbi Alvin Berkun).  She explained that we are told to remember that we were slaves in Egypt.  We are not told to remember that we were given the Torah.  We are not told to remember that we were given a land.  Why is it that we are commanded to remember that we were slaves and not about any of the other miracles that took place?  Why do we have to remember the apparently negative aspect of the story and not the positive?  Rabbi Berkun’s explanation had to do with the fact that we must continue to hold that thought about being slaves in our minds so that we do not allow such slavery to happen to anyone else.  Having experienced slavery should continue to guide what we do as modern day Jews. 

On the Dictionary.com website, one of the definitions of slavery is “a state of subjection like that of a slave”.  Our Federation supports programs and agencies that work to help free individuals both here in Pittsburgh and in Jewish communities around the world from their own personal slaveries.  That “slavery” may be to hunger, lack of Jewish education or physical and emotional needs.  The dollars we raise and that you generously donate are a tool to move people from slavery to freedom. 

As you sit at your Seder remembering that we were slaves in Egypt, please know that you are helping to move community members from slavery to freedom.

I will not be writing for the next few weeks so let me extend my best wishes to each of you for a very happy, healthy and kosher Passover. 

Shabbat Shalom.

Jeffrey H. Finkelstein
President/CEO