Turn it and turn it

For anyone who may be checking out this blog for new material, I have to apologize. I'd set myself an "assignment" of writing something on the Torah portion every week, but the creative juices just haven't been flowing lately. I hope to be able to get back into the swing of things eventually, either with previous portions that I've missed or with future ones. Please check back occasionally.

Ex. 12:21-28 ..you shall say, “It is the passover sacrifice of YHVH, because He passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but saved our houses. The people then bowed low in homage.” - Ex. 12:27 This is the first of the four places in the Torah in which the Israelites are told by Moses to tell their children about the Passover experience, but there is a jarring difference between this passage and the one that is the most familiar to us. (Ex. 13:8: “It is because of what YHVH did for me when I went free from Egypt.”) Why the difference? It is on the basis of the second verse that Jews of today are told that we should feel that we, too, were slaves in Egypt, but the words of the verse in our aliyah make it sound as if the whole thing happened to someone else, not even the ones who are to tell of it from firsthand experience. To be sure, there is the word “our” in “our houses,” but it sounds very generic and feeble compared to the power of the later