Today’s the first day of one of the most important festivals in the Jewish calendar: Passover. It’s a festival of freedom – nominally the redemption of the Hebrews from their slavery under the Pharoah. The Passover Seder, the oldest continuously observed religious ceremony in the world, tells the story of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. (Click on route map to enlarge it.) Jewish tradition says that each generation must imagine that they personally had departed from Egypt. And the sages say that each generation must tell the story in its own terms. Thus, today, the exodus from Egypt must be extrapolated to the freedom of everyone, everywhere. Someone wise once said: ‘No-one is free when others are oppressed’. So, this Passover in the Jewish year 5769, my thoughts turn yet again to Gilad Shalit (pictured), who has been cruelly and illegally deprived of his freedom since 25 June 2006. Born in August 1986, he was 19-years-old when he was kidnapped by Hamas; he’s now 22-years-old. I can’t begin to imagine the conditions he’s being held under, what indignities he’s being subjected to, the physical and psychological effects his captivity’s causing him, and the anguish of his parents and family and friends. Part of Gilad Shalit is me; and part of me is him. So this Passover I remind Hamas of Abraham Lincoln’s words: ‘Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves’.
