This is a watershed Pesach, welcome it

RABBI ARI SHISHLER

Sarah sighs. They’ve had the conversation. Multiple times. She already knows his spiel: it’s not that he doesn’t love her or the kids, it’s just that his boss is a tyrant who tolerates no excuses, and there is so much pressure at work, and everyone else is pulling their weight, and he can’t let the team down, and this is a national project, and he is on a perpetual treadmill. Sarah rolls her eyes. It’s not like Asher brings much home to show for all those hours of labour. And here she is, once again, trying to arrange a date night – a last-ditch attempt to keep their marriage alive – and he’s mentally and emotionally AWOL (absent without leave).

One day, something unusual happens. Asher comes home early. Sarah is bemused. Has her husband experienced an awakening? Apparently not. He explains how some issues have arisen on the production line, and they’ve sent everyone home. He’s agitated. She’s thrilled. The kids are confused.

A day later, rumours swirl that production is indefinitely halted. Apparently, some people from work are unwell, perhaps injured, nobody is quite sure. Some whisper that a nationwide crisis is brewing. Asher grows agitated with each passing day at home. He frets about being able to feed his family. Sarah revels in this unexpected family time. He rummages around for snippets of information or predictions from the experts. Sarah gently reminds him that all that vaunted progress has come at a cost to family and quality of life. Asher can’t see it, he knows no other life. His father and grandfather lived this way, and he is sure his son will one day live this way too.

Then it comes, that bewildering instruction that the rumour mills had warned of for weeks: “Stay home, with only your immediate family. Anyone who leaves home may die”.

Asher eats with his family, matzah, maror, and lamb. It’s a humble, intimate moment. He reflects on the whirlwind demise of financial structures, of a superpower, of social hierarchies. He realises that Sarah is right. They’ve been slaves, run off their feet, constantly glancing over their shoulders to ensure that they have satisfied the expectations of others. He breathes easier, and contemplates the dawn of a brighter tomorrow for those who dare to embrace it.

It’s the eve of Pesach, 1312 BCE.

It could just as well have been Pesach 2020.

Our planet has experienced world wars, devastating natural disasters, and global pandemics. It has never seen this. A world more connected than ever, totally frozen. How many people may succumb is a moot point. Judaism insists that even one life lost is a whole universe destroyed. What is most intriguing is how it’s not the deaths that have paralysed every nation on earth and decimated global markets. It’s the fear. Fear of death. Fear of collapse, of immobility, of overtaxed healthcare systems. Fear that we have lost control.

Someone recently commented to me that modern people are control freaks. We’re not. We are control addicts. I first appreciated this in November 2010, as I passed a snaking line of eager gamers outside Manhattan’s Toys R Us. Clad in winter-wear, wrapped in blankets and clutching steaming thermoses, they had started their all-night vigil to welcome the Xbox Kinect. Times Square dazzled them with luminescent screen displays that screamed the Kinect tagline, “You are the controller”.

This wasn’t a jingle for a new gaming console, it was the mantra of the millennial. Big tech has lulled us into a sense of control. You can prepare a steaming meal in minutes, binge watch all 16 seasons of Grey’s in a week, or click online to receive goods from anywhere in the world almost overnight. We had built the most collaborative global village, with history’s most robust financial systems. Medicine had beaten smallpox and the bubonic plague, and science had placed us on Mars. Who would have thought that a mutated flu virus could crash our super-sophisticated systems?

When you think about it, we’re not so different from ancient Egypt. We also worship the source of our livelihood, as they worshipped the Nile. We also live as slaves to a collective effort to build structures that will outlast and deplete their makers. We subscribe to Pharaoh’s belief in the self-made man.

Now, it seems, our plague has come. G-d doesn’t send plagues to kill, but to teach. Moses’ opening monologue to Pharaoh distils their purpose in a line: “With this you shall know that I am G-d.” Pharaoh obstinately clung to his insistence that he was in control as his empire was ravaged by supernatural disasters and societal collapse. Only when every one of his systems failed did Pharaoh surrender to the reality that only G-d choreographs life’s every detail. Our modern world is discovering that same lesson as we speak.

Like our forefathers 3 300 years ago, this year we will celebrate a humble Pesach, confined to our own homes. The great superpower that has consumed our lives, indoctrinated our children and redefined our morality is on its knees. This will be a watershed Pesach. G-d is offering us a chance for redemption and a whole new world. We should be “woke” enough to welcome it.

• Rabbi Ari Shishler is the rabbi of Chabad Strathaven.