It was recently Passover, 5784. I was intending to write this post during the Passover period, but as anyone who is observant knows, Passover is a very busy time, and what I have to say here takes time and mental energy. My message, however, has been with me for many years and is applicable at Passover regardless of the year. Now is just as good a time as any.

In Judaism, every year in the spring we celebrate Passover, a festival commemorating God’s delivering of the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt. Within the (extensive) liturgy of this festival, during the meal (seder) where we re-enact this delivering, there is an injunction: ‘in every generation a person is obligated to see themselves as if they [themselves] had been brought out of Egypt’ (Though the original Hebrew uses the grammatical masculine, in this translation I use ‘they’ because rabbinically, this is an obligation upon every Jewish person regardless of gender). During nearly every Passover in my recent memory I have heard a rabbi discuss these words, and most of these discussions centre around how challenging it is for modern day Jews to place themselves within the same shoes as our ancestors who were redeemed from Egypt. Many of these discussions mention as well how we can extrapolate that redemption to parts of our lives which need spiritual invigoration and to areas in which we feel restricted or trapped. Some rabbis have taken this to another level, discussing the elements of the Exodus story through the lens of psychological adjustment from slavery to freedom, used as a metaphor which is then applied to daily life today.

I’ve never heard anyone take this injunction to any literal level. It’s always applied as a metaphor. Perhaps this is because the phrase in the Mishnah uses the word ‘כאלו’, which means ‘as if’.

But what if for some people, placing themselves in the shoes of the redeemed isn’t as challenging? What if it reflects a true reality for them that allows them to connect deeply to this mitzvah? What significance does this injunction hold for those of us who have been slaves, whether that means in the actual sense of trafficking through modern day slavery, or even in the more slightly removed sense of slavery to real problems, like addiction, mental health challenges, and more? What if for some people it is actually reflecting a literal process? For me it certainly is. In some Passovers, the story of the Exodus has hit a little too close to home, but in others, it’s been right what I needed, reminding me of my story and what I believe is God’s help within it.

I vividly remember one Passover in particular, when I heard a rabbi whom I especially trusted give this all-too-familiar lesson. Because of my trust in him I reached out privately to explain its significance for me. He knew that I am a survivor of modern day slavery and exploitation and that against all odds, I was able to escape it. These details about my life had never seemed to disturb him before, and so I eagerly shared my close connection to this liturgy, expecting that he would happily accept it and appreciate my perspective. To my baffled surprise (even now), he physically shrunk back from the conversation, and rapidly changed the subject. My connecting my own slavery and redemption to that of the children of Israel evoked such a visceral, negative response in him that for a few years after, I felt ashamed of it myself. Was I wrong to feel so close to this story? Did I misread something? Is my own experience so upsetting/unusual/bizarre that this injunction wasn’t meant to apply here?

Of course not.

Society has an interesting way of relating to survivors of extreme trauma. In my experience, it’s a response meant to provide psychological distance from the discomfiting reality that evil things happen to innocent people. We all acknowledge that bad things occur. But when we are confronted with such realities at the personal level, even if we are seasoned professionals like this rabbi was (he worked in mental health services), it’s a shock to our psychological homeostasis. Perhaps it’s based in the comfortable delusion that, ‘well, it happens, but not to me or people I know!’

The problem with this is first, sadly, people like myself aren’t rare. I’m certainly not the only Jewish trafficking and abuse survivor. I’d be willing to bet that I’m not the only Jew for whom the Exodus story holds such significance. And yet I’ve never heard a rabbi (or any other clergy-person, for that matter), directly mention such realities in their sermons (on any subject, for that matter). I’ve even heard rabbis say during Passover that, ‘while none of us are slaves today and so will struggle to relate to this story, we still must try to follow this commandment’, which is….well, sadly ironic given that in 2024, an estimated 50 million people in the world are victims of modern day slavery.

Second, people like me exist beyond the boundaries of our trauma. You wouldn’t know it, however, from the way that society does talk about survivors. Usually the primary focus is on the fact that we are survivors, and then on the details of what we survived, and finally, on how society can ‘help people like these’ (notice the distance in such language). But after we are ‘helped’, what then? Does it all just dissolve into the ether? No; we carry the legacy of our trauma, for good or bad, forward. It informs our lives, our perspectives, and our relation to the world, and rightfully so. Some of us are able to take our trauma and build good things out of it, while some (all) of us struggle with this. But society’s psychological distancing tends to put survivors in a limiting box of ‘survivor’ (which no one we know is, certainly!) and then apply the facets of life, such as, but certainly not limited to, spiritual lessons and insights, to ‘everyone else’ (i.e., us and the people we know!).

As you can imagine, this is very isolating for survivors of extreme trauma. When you don’t see yourself reflected back in society’s lens, you internalise a sense of being ‘out of step’ with the world. This sense is of course even more vivid for those of us who were forcibly isolated from ‘normal’ society, but it doesn’t take that to feel, and be perceived as, ‘not really belonging’. And when we speak of our experiences as what they are — integral parts of our life story — the physical and emotional shrinking of our peers reminds us that we are still, essentially, outsiders to the world, simply because of what happened to us.

It’s taken years for me to realise and honour the fact that it’s my status as a survivor that gives me a unique ability to connect so closely to this mitzvah, and to appreciate what has happened in my life to bring me here to today. When I first thought of this post, I had in mind going through the story of the Exodus and describing the psychological markers in the story which are telltale, and highly relatable, signs of surviving and healing from trauma. But I wasn’t ready for that. This story took higher precedence: at the seder this year, the rabbi had people go around the table and read a paragraph from each bit of the Passover story and its liturgy. I don’t take it as coincidence that the paragraph I received had this injunction, to ‘consider oneself as if he or she had been brought out of Egypt’. For the first time I was able to fully relate to this story, both spiritually and, well, literally, without a deep sense of shame or embarrassment. So instead, I decided to write this account, which owns my story and which honours my connection to the Exodus.

God brought me out of my own ‘Egypt’, and that is something I can now say without shrinking, without shame, and with an internal sense of strength which honours my experience. May He continue to do such miracles for everyone trapped in slavery of any kind, literal or figurative.