"Once again, my warmest Passover greetings (it is heartily meant while I would have preferred if Egypt would have been able to accommodate happily this wonderful expatriate community and motivate them not to flee to Sinai some 34 centuries ago and deprive us from their wonderful skills and peerless talents!!)."

It would have been nice if it all could have been settled amicably... but absolutist despotisms of any stripe are rarely good at that sort of thing. Which brings us to the central points of Passover.

The Point

In one sense, Passover is really about preparation for the giving of the 10 Commandments on Mt. Sinai. Abraham is the first major break: belief in the existence of one G-d, without shape or form. His acceptance of G-d's existence creates ethical monotheism, but its real impact is not felt until the second major break. For the corrollary of ethical monotheism is the idea that good and evil have an existence independent of earthly agents or representatives, and untouchable by earthly authority.

This idea will change the world - and the Passover story is both its grand entrance and its clarion call.

Which is great, but how does that relate to the Egyptians?

The Egyptians

Some Jewish sages believe that G-d wished to make a serious example of an absolutist earthly ruler, to convey with utmost clarity that now and forever, no human was equal to or above G-d, and that moral law was not something dictated by societal conventions or the pronouncements of human "authorities."

In other words, Egypt's Pharaoh was simply being used to make a divine point. A very very important divine point with enormous future implications, but one that could also have been made anywhere else in the world at that time. Slavery? Almost universal. Belief in idols? Ditto. Cruelty? Then, as now, the rule not the exception. Absolutist rulers claiming divine descent or status? Pharaoh isn't the first, and won't be the last by any means.

We focus on the Egyptians during Passover (and both Islam and Christianity made it part of their stories too), but really, there was nothing especially blameworthy about Egypt as a society that didn't apply equally to most of its neighbours.

Which brings us to the spilling of the 10 drops of wine.

Drops of Freedom

I've always seen the spilling of the 10 drops of wine while the names of the plagues are recited as being about basic human compassion for anyone's suffering. That still applies, I'm sure, but the more I talked to Tarek, the more I wondered if I was missing something. Something big.

As noted above, the 10 Plagues could have happened to so many other societies. Most of humanity was like that at the time... and many people even today live under systems no less absolute. Yet all Egyptians suffered in the Plagues, because of decisions that many had no part in. Granted, many would also have been involved - but without a moral framework that separates morality from a God-King's dictates, it isn't even possible to talk about complicity. The concept would be meaningless.

That's why it was not Israel alone who was redeemed at Passover.

Indeed, it's only after Exodus and Sinai that the world can even begin to talk about the prospect of a different future - for the Egyptians themselves, and for all mankind, as well as for the Israelites.

And so we spill the drops of wine in sorrow every year. Not only for the Egyptians' suffering, but also for the lack of freedom that led to it - and which remained after the Israelites has left. Because after the 10th Plague, Israel went free. But the Egyptians, too, were slaves, subject to Pharaoh's absolute authority. Their lives remained his even after Israel's Exodus, to be snuffed out at a whim or a word.

Who cries for them? We do. Every year.

We drink the Passover wine to commemorate our freedom, and - and yes, we spill it in compassion. But maybe we also spill it to remind ourselves of those we left behind, unable to share in the wine of freedom because they were still unfree.

And as long as that remains the case, our cup of freedom is never really full.