The pain we all feel: Our source of strength

I sat in a television studio, recording a "Seder Night," around a table full of famous people I didn’t know but felt I was "supposed" to know: a successful musician, a stand-up comedian, an Olympic medalist, an award-winning journalist, a globally renowned actress-artist. And I wondered to myself: What am I doing here?

I was invited, presumably, because I am a rabbi on one hand and an activist for the return of the hostages on the other, but I didn’t feel that either of these aspects connected in any way to this event. That is, until everyone opened their mouths and started speaking.

Everyone spoke about the hostages.

Without exception, and without prior coordination, whether in response to the mundane question "What’s up?" or to a deeper question about the meaning of the holiday, every single person spoke about the hostages and the difficulty of celebrating the holiday of freedom when we have 59 brothers and sisters still held captive by Hamas. Immediately, with the realization that behind every celebrity was a person just like me, worried and constantly thinking about the hostages, my sense of alienation transformed into a deep feeling of brotherhood. But it took me a few more hours to process how amazing, profound, and perfectly expressive this was of the strength of the Jewish people, as taught precisely by the holiday of Passover.

We might take it for granted that over the past year and a half, we all feel that our hearts are held captive in Gaza, whether we have relatives or acquaintances there or not. But this is not at all a given. What a privilege it is to belong to a people with such powerful and rooted solidarity. What a wonder it is, in our disconnected and alienated world, to realize that our connection to one another is so deeply ingrained that it cannot be escaped—that speaking of the Jewish people as a family is not mere rhetoric but a tangible reality. What a miracle it is that we feel each other’s pain.

Celebrating Despite the Pain

The holiday of Passover teaches us to celebrate not in spite of this pain, nor alongside it, but to truly celebrate the pain itself. If we weren’t meant to celebrate the pain, why would we have the bread of affliction, bitter herbs, saltwater, and charoset on our Seder table? One might think it would be more fitting to focus solely on the "absolute victory" over the enemy during this holiday. Why do we also need to taste the bitterness, the tears, the torment? And let’s not mistakenly think these are merely props to help us remember the difficult days of the past. The first time the Israelites were commanded to eat the sacrifice with matzot and bitter herbs, they were still under Egyptian slavery, living in a terrifying reality.

In truth, for a significant portion of our history, Jews celebrated Passover while living under oppression and existential fear. In that darkness, the Seder night taught us to celebrate not only the redemption but also the enslavement, with the understanding that this too is part of our story, part of what makes us who we are—embedding deep in our national DNA the concern for the weak, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, and the aspiration to create a society based on compassion and justice.

Our enemies are mistaken in thinking that our ability to hold this pain in this way is our Achilles’ heel. They see a nation suffering from the absence of the hostages and interpret it as a sign of weakness. The traumas of the past year and a half have even led some of us to start believing this, to recoil from our national inclination toward compassion and mercy, and to think that to survive in this neighborhood, we must overcome or suppress it. But the opposite is true.

The pain we all feel – that is precisely the unique source of our strength as a people. That is exactly what makes us invincible. The fact that we all struggle to celebrate the holiday of freedom when our brothers and sisters are not free is the deepest expression of our commitment to the value of life as the highest value and to our belief in the infinite power of the human spirit. When we met the survivors of captivity who returned recently, we understood that this is a belief that did not disappoint, one that materialized before our eyes with a strength we couldn’t even imagine.

If we are committed to blessing a broken matzah, we must also learn to bless our heart that is broken in Gaza. When we understand that there is great strength in this pain we all experience, we will be able to celebrate it, and we will succeed in bringing them back.

Rabbi Avidan Friedman is an educator. He is the co-founder and CEO of the Yanshuf Association.