As If: A Meditation for Passover 2026

Scholar Andrew Tobolowsky, in his recent book The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, goes to great lengths to show the way in which the concept of “becoming Israel” has been used over and over again throughout history, and perhaps first by the Judahites themselves, in various and even competing ways, during the construction of the Hebrew Bible. Going back to the 6th century BCE, there was already a debate about the relationship between the Judahites who had been exiled to Babylonia, the Israelites who had earlier been removed by Assyria, and the community of Babylonian Jews that returned to ancient Jerusalem. This question of authenticity, of who is the real Jew, becomes almost moot. From the first steps into self-definition, the Judahites of the Hebrew Bible were already competing amongst each other, and with outside forces, to claim the mantle of “Israel.”

One of the core components of the Passover seder, articulated in the Mishna, is the directive that, in every generation, we are to see ourselves as if we were brought out of Egypt. Not to claim that we literally did; not to claim our ancestors authentically did; but, to see ourselves as if. The as if, k’ilu in Hebrew, is the crux of the phrase. As Tobolowsky makes clear, there are many people who see themselves as if they are Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who received the Torah and the special covenant with God. The Judahites were, perhaps, just the first to articulate this as if. The history of Judaism itself is a continual renegotiation of this as if, as different communities moved around the world, integrating other people and practices into their modes of Torah, and, every so often, adopting a new layer of worldwide canon that acts as a fundamental basis for Judaism. If the Passover holiday is one of the defining moments of Jewish self conception, then it teaches us this simple lesson: We are deriving life-altering meaning from ritual, which transports us to an experience of our core ethics through symbols. It leads us to express gratitude for our experience today, hallowing the ultimate value of freedom, joy, celebration, and redemption. The message of the Seder isn’t “Our ancestors literally left Egypt and made it to the Promised Land, because that is where they and we belong.” It is, “We have learned the value, from generation to generation, of a world more liberated than the one that came before us, and we must continue devoting ourselves to That Which Brings About Freedom.” 

As we finish our yearly retelling of the legend of the Torah, the mythic story that Jews worldwide use to ground their as if, let us remember that Judaism is not about a literal matter of ancestral descent, or a true belief in the historicity of the stories of our past. Judaism is about passing down, from generation to generation, the knowledge that we, each of us, must act as if this is our inheritance. We must acknowledge that this as if binds us into a covenant with those who, too, act as if this is their inheritance, and that inheritance is geared towards a clear goal: to raise up as an ideal That Which moves the world from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from mourning to Festival, from darkness to a great light, and from enslavement to redemption.

One of the core components of the Passover seder, articulated in the Mishna, is the directive that, in every generation, we are to see ourselves as if we were brought out of Egypt. The message of the Seder isn’t “Our ancestors literally left Egypt and made it to the Promised Land, because that is where they and we belong.” It is, “We have learned the value, from generation to generation, of a world more liberated than the one that came before us, and we must continue devoting ourselves to That Which Brings About Freedom.” 

Judaism is not about a literal matter of ancestral descent, or a true belief in the historicity of the stories of our past. Judaism is about passing down, from generation to generation, the knowledge that we, each of us, must act as if this is our inheritance. 

That inheritance is geared towards a clear goal: to raise up as an ideal That Which moves the world from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from mourning to Festival, from darkness to a great light, and from enslavement to redemption.