Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16): January 23, 2021/10 Shevat 5781

In the Broadway phenomenon that is Hamilton, there are many great songs. The show's opening number has been a viral hit ever since an early draft of it was performed by Lin Manuel Miranda at a White House poetry event in 2009, "The Schuyler Sisters" gave the 2010s and 20s a new feminist empowerment anthem, and Daveed Diggs set a record for the fastest delivery of lyrics in any Broadway show with his rap in "Guns and Ships." I want to talk about another song, though. "The Story of Tonight" is perhaps not the flashiest of numbers, but it is relevant to one of the themes of this week's parashah. Early in the first act of the play, Hamilton joins his new friends, Hercules Mulligan, John Laurens, and the Marquis de Lafayette, in dedicating their lives to the cause of revolution, declaring that even though they may not see the end result of the fight for freedom, future generations will remember them and tell their story.

In Parashat Bo, Moses and Aaron once again appear before Pharaoh, demanding freedom for the Israelites. When their demands are rejected, God brings the last three plagues, and finally, Pharaoh relents. In preparation for the final plague and their impending freedom, the Israelites are instructed on the procedures for celebrating the holiday of Passover, both those specific to the first celebration in Egypt and those for future celebrations.

One of the things which our ancestors are commanded to do is to tell future generations the story of the Exodus. First Moses tells them, "When your children ask you 'what is the meaning of this ritual [the Passover Seder, which Moses had just instituted]?' you shall say 'it is the Passover sacrifice to God because he passed over the Israelite houses in Egypt when he struck the Egyptians and their houses but saved our houses.'" In the next chapter, after the tenth plague has happened and Pharaoh has set free the slaves, God is giving instructions to Moses about maintaining the memory of the Exodus and establishing that the annual commemoration includes seven days of abstaining from leaven. He instructs Moses that the storytelling must also be proactive, not just answering questions, "and you shall tell your child 'this is because of what God did for me when I went free from Egypt.'" God also commands it a third time, saying, "When, in the future, your child comes to ask you, 'what is this?' you shall say to them, 'It was with a strong hand that God took us out of Egypt and out of the house of bondage…'" These final two passages, though not included on any "greatest hits" lists of Torah verses, are a daily part of the lives of many Jews, as they are two of the four passages inside tefillin, so even if many of us don't know the verses, we carry them with us on our bodies.

Why is telling the story so important that we have to be told three times, in slightly different forms, to tell our children of our national redemption? Telling and retelling the story highlights the cyclical, constant nature of the path of the Jewish people. The generation that was freed from Egypt did not get to enter the Promised Land, and neither were the generations that were exiled from the land after the Babylonian and later the Roman conquests able to see their descendants returning to the land. But the stories we told kept us knowing who we were and from where we came.

The last thing we do at the Seder before concluding the narrative portion of the evening and beginning the meal is read a section of the Mishnah quoting Rabban Gamliel in which he decrees that "in every generation, each person is obligated to see himself as if he personally had been freed from Egypt." The Haggadah also reminds us earlier, "even if we were all wise, all brilliant, all elders, and all knowledgeable in Torah, it would still be obligatory to tell of the Exodus from Egypt, and whoever increases their telling of the Exodus is even more praiseworthy." We tell our people's story because we don't exist in a vacuum. Our present is the product of our past, and even if we do not live to see the glory of the final redemption, we continue to work towards it, and when our children tell our story, they, like us, will tell the story of the night in Egypt.