The Passover seder is not just a story about leaving something behind—it is memory with coordinates. In this post‑Passover reflection, Rabbi Pam Silk explores how the seder roots us in a particular people, a real land, and a courageous Jewish identity that refuses to be blurred away.

From parsley dipped in salt water to “next year in Jerusalem,” Rabbi Silk describes the seder as sacred theater that asks us to feel our people’s journey in our bodies and our lives. She wrestles with the impulse to universalize the story of Exodus while cutting out its destination—our connection to Israel, Zionism, and Jewish peoplehood.

In a time of rising antisemitism and fraught conversations about Israel and Jewish identity, Rabbi Silk calls us to an act of Jewish courage: to hold particularism and universalism in thoughtful tension, to live our distinctiveness with honesty and pride, and to trust that our deepest, most rooted story can still offer moral vision to the wider world.