The Exodus Story
We weren’t always slaves in Egypt. The story of how we became slaves to the Pharoahs of Egypt and ultimately, how we were freed, is really the basis for the story of Passover. It’s a part of history that belongs to all of us.
The Torah recounts the early history of the Jewish people. It describes how God commanded Abraham to leave his country and his father’s house and to go to the land of Canaan, where he would be the founder of a great nation. Abraham and his wife, Sarah, obeyed God’s command and journeyed to Canaan. There God blessed them and their family. Their son was Isaac, who married Rebecca. Their grandson was Jacob; and it was Jacob who went down to Egypt.
Why did Jacob journey to Egypt? Because Joseph, his son by his beloved, Rachel, had become prime minister to Pharoah, king of Egypt. When a famine broke out in Canaan, Joseph asked his father and his family to join him in Egypt, where food was plentiful. Then Joseph gave his father and his brethren a possession, as Pharaoh commanded. And Israel dwelt in the land of Goshen; and they were fruitful and multiplied exceedingly.
Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. This new Pharaoh said unto his people, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us; come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that if there be a war, they join themselves unto our enemies and fight against us.” Therefore Pharaoh set over them taskmasters to afflict them with the burdens of forced labor at mortar and brick and in all sorts of work in the fields. But the more the Egyptians afflicted them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread out, so that the Egyptians came to despise and dread the Israelites. So Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, “Every Hebrew boy that is born shall be thrown into the Nile.”
We cried unto Adonai, the God of our ancestors, and Adonai heard our voice and saw our trouble and our toil and our oppression. And Adonai brought us forth out of Egypt, with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and with great terror and with signs and with wonders; not through a messenger, not through any intermediary or any supernatural being, but the Holy One, alone, in solitary glory.
(All raise their cups of wine)
We praise God who keeps faith with the people Israel. God’s promise of Redemption in ancient days sustains us now.
For more than one enemy has risen against us to destroy us. In every generation, in every age, some rise up to plot our annihilation. But the Holy One, Blessed is He, rescues us from their hands.
(All replace their cups untasted)
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