Rabbi Angela Buchdahl Says Passover Is a Chance to Remember Our Shared Humanity. Here Is How We Come Together

Spring is almost upon us, and as we move into this season of renewal and reflection, many of us are asking: How do we hold space for one another in such a fractured world? How do we find common ground when the loudest voices around us seem determined to divide us?

In the Jewish tradition, this weekend marks the start of Passover—a holiday rooted in the story of Exodus, of leaving behind what enslaves us and journeying toward freedom. It’s a deeply human story—one of resilience, community, and hope. It’s a story so many of us need right now, no matter our faith.

That’s why The Sunday Paper sat down with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, the senior rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York City and a deeply thoughtful voice in our national spiritual conversation. Rabbi Buchdahl has long spoken about the importance of inclusion, listening with intention, and honoring the full complexity of who we are. We asked her to reflect on what the story of Passover can teach us right now. Her insights are an important reminder that we have far more in common than we think—and that there is power in showing up with open hearts, especially in times like these.

A CONVERSATION WITH RABBI ANGELA BUCHDAHL

Passover is a story of liberation and resilience. What messages from the holiday can be especially grounding for all of us in this moment—regardless of our faith?

One of the reasons I think the story of Passover is so powerful is because in every generation and in every people, there are narratives of people who go from their narrow places. The name Egypt in Hebrew literally means narrow place. To be in that narrow, dark place is a mental and emotional state as well as a physical place. 

The narrative of being able to leave your enslavement—both with a sense of reaching out for God’s outstretched arm and also that you have to pick yourself up and find the agency and the strength to leave—is a really powerful one. We can all march through to freedom. 

We often think of monotheism as a religious view that there’s only one God. But monotheism is also a political stance that we will not tolerate tyrants. In essence, Pharaoh is the paradigmatic tyrant who basically asks people to worship and serve him rather than a higher calling. This message that people have to come together to overthrow tyrants is one that continues to resonate for us today. The ending of the story is that we always do. We always get to liberation. And we do so with a combination of a sense of faith, but also personal and collective agency.  

In a world where the loudest and often most divisive voices tend to dominate the conversation, how can we lean in to the quieter, more compassionate truths that actually connect us? 

This is such a challenge for this day.

One of the powerful messages of Passover is that sometimes the people that we think of as our enemies are only our enemies because we’ve labeled them such. And actually, when we encounter them in powerful ways, we recognize that we share more in common. 

There are several examples of this throughout the Exodus story. The first is the fact that Pharaoh’s daughter is the one who sees Moses in the Nile and has compassion, taking in this Hebrew baby knowing that she’s taking a risk. When the Israelites leave Egypt, “a mixed multitude” left with them. What does that mean? Some rabbis say it was actually other Egyptians who also wanted to follow a God of freedom and to overthrow anyone who would demand oppression of other people. It’s a reminder that there’s much that unites good people across lines.

The Seder table is traditionally a place of storytelling and reflection. In this polarized time, how can we become better listeners around our holiday tables? 

In terms of listening, this is something people have been asking me a lot about with some trepidation around their Passover Seders, because it’s such a fraught time. Families are so divided over American politics. In Jewish families, there’s quite a lot of debate about Israeli politics and what Israel should or shouldn’t be doing. People ask me, “How am I going to bring my family together at the table? What are we going to talk about?”

There’s a beautiful skill called reflective listening. It’s listening to things that are hard not with an ear to try to convince the other person of what you think, but with an ear to trying to understand where they’re coming from. It requires of curiosity. It requires us to listen to things that feel hard. But if we do this—if we come to conversations giving people the benefit of the doubt and with an understanding that they’re coming from a place of goodness and wanting the best—I think that we could actually bridge some of our divides.

The fundamental pedagogy of the Seder is asking questions. The entire Seder is set up to invite people to ask questions. Built into it are questions that the youngest person at the table is supposed to ask, because we want to encourage our youngest children to ask questions. The whole point of this is to build our empathy muscle. 

The Seder is an exercise in empathy. Because rather than just saying, “Let me tell you the story of my ancestors when they were slaves,” we’re commanded to imagine as if we ourselves were enslaved. We actually are invited to taste the tears, to ingest the bread, and so with our senses, we are actually invited to create the Jewish remnant of slavery and then walk to freedom. That’s a much bigger ask than just listening to stories. To imagine this is happening to you and to put yourself in that place ultimately makes us more empathetic to the plight of those who have been oppressed or who are strangers. Because, as we say, “We were once the stranger.”

How do we begin the healing process with family or friends with whom we’ve disagreed?

Start with the fact that you are family and that you are committed to each other. And when I say family, I don’t just mean your blood relatives, but also your larger community—your faith community, your school community, other communities. 

It’s also important to remember that the people you love don’t have to agree with everything that you believe. You can still value them and love them. Ideally, you’ll both feel heard. Just the simple acknowledgement that something said felt hurtful or like a betrayal can have an enormous impact on the ability to move forward and heal.

How can faith or tradition help amplify the voices of reason, love, and shared values during what feels like a very divisive time?

Religion tries to remind us that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves—that there is so much more that connects us in our humanity than divides us. 

The story of Passover is a specifically Jewish story, but, of course, it’s a story that is in the Hebrew Bible, which is part of the narrative of everyone of the Abrahamic tradition—meaning Christians and Muslims as well. I’m going to participate in a Black Jewish Seder this year. We know that the narrative of coming out from our enslavement to freedom was one that the African American community drew on for their own liberation theology and their own stories of coming out of their narrow place.  

How beautiful is that? It’s a reminder that this is not a story that is just for one people. This is a human story. 

Here’s the most important thing: This is not about individual redemption. We are not redeemed unless all of us are redeemed. We have to be in this together. All of us must reach out of our narrow places and our oppression and our enslavement. 

We’re not going to be okay if only some of us are on the other side of that Red Sea. We all need to get to redemption together.

Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl serves as the Senior Rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York City and is the first woman to lead Central’s Reform congregation in its 180-year history. Born in Korea to a Jewish American father and a Korean Buddhist mother, Rabbi Buchdahl is the first Asian American to be ordained as a cantor or rabbi in North America. Her memoir, Heart of a Stranger is set to be published by Penguin/Random House in October 2025.