A d'var Torah as we anticipate Passover's arrival

On the first day of Passover the tradition is for Jews to read verses from the Torah depicting a tense scene in the slave ghettos of Pharaoh’s Egypt just before the arrival of the 10th and final plague, the slaying of the first born of Egypt. Moses calls together the elders of the people and says to them, “Go, pick out lambs for your families, and slaughter the Passover offering. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and apply some of the blood that is in the basin to the lintel and to the two doorposts [of your homes]. None of you shall go outside the door of your homes until morning. For when the Eternal goes through to smite the Egyptian first born sons, God will see the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, and God will pass over the door and not let the Destroyer enter and smite your home.” (Ex 12:21-23)

In recent years much has been written about how the Passover story begins and ends with birth imagery. In the Reconstructionist movement’s haggada…