In a federal courtroom, I watched migrants led in shackled at wrists and ankles, processed in minutes.
One man, confused and frightened, finally said,“ We don’ t come here to rob you. We just come here to find work to support our families.”
Afterward, I wrote down their names- a litany of human beings- because names resist disappearance.
Passover insists on names. Pharaoh is named. Moses is named. Even the daughter who reaches into the Nile is named by our tradition. The story refuses to let suffering dissolve into statistics.
The blue bandana was not a solution. It was not policy. It was not an answer to a crisis.
It was a sign.
A small, visible declaration that someone might pass this way and live.
At the Seder, when we say Let all who are hungry come and eat, we are not only recalling the bread of affliction. We are placing a marker in the landscape of memory. We are tying something bright and visible to the tree of our tradition and saying:
There is sustenance here. There is water here.
37