Every year at the Seder we lift the matzah and say: This is the bread of affliction … Let all who are hungry come and eat.
We say it easily. Around tables heavy with food and memory, we open a symbolic door.
But the Torah’ s refrain is not symbolic: You know the soul of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Not you know the law. Not you know the argument. You know the soul.
In the canyon near the border, a volunteer once called out in Spanish,“ We are friendly, and we are bringing you water.”
No one came out.
In that landscape, even kindness can sound like a trap.
The Israelites knew that terrain of fear. They left Egypt not knowing whether the wilderness held promise or death. They crossed into uncertainty carrying children and memory and the thin hope of freedom. The Torah does not romanticize that journey. It names hunger. It names thirst.
To remember Egypt is to remember what thirst feels like in the body.
And so the commandment: do not oppress the stranger. Love the stranger. Again and again and again- because we forget what it felt like to stand unprotected in a world that does not want you.
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