The day the Jews were told that Pharaoh would allow their departure from Egypt is 14 Nisan on the Jewish calendar, which falls on April 12th in 2025. So in that sense, today is the anniversary of our freedom. But relating the Exodus story to our lives today is obviously a much more interesting exercise than celebrating one historical event.
Our Passover seder tonight will tell a story of long and brutal slavery, ending after ten plagues with a miraculous mass escape from a vengeful army into the desert. We are not supposed to think of this, and we are explicitly instructed not to tell our children about it, as something that happened to our ancestors in the remote past, but rather that this was our own experience in our lifetimes, like last year or the year before, or maybe just before Covid or a couple years after 911.
Part of the ritual is to spill one drop of wine from our cups for each plague the Egyptians had to suffer for Pharaoh's intransigence before he finally let us go. We cannot be oblivious to any harm to any people, even our enemies.
When the kids ask why this night is different from all other nights and why we enact such an elaborate drama during a family dinner, we must explain, "This is important; I want you to know what God did for me when he brought me out of Egypt: I was a slave, and now I am free."
The story goes on through the trek across Sinai, disgraceful golden calf debauchery, the delivery of Torah, the gift of the Sabbath, and arrival at the promised land. There are so many lessons in Passover. Some families will elaborate on these lessons for most of the night, and others will edit things and get to dinner. The religion is an awesome, almost incalculable reservoir of human beauty and understanding.
But only a day before Passover this year, I sat in a legal conference room at EMHC with Gus, the "high-maintenance patient" I've worked with for years, Dr. Gill, the failure at medicine, Joe "dumb-as-basalt" Basso, a young blonde nurse named Tim, and an old hag psychologist, Dr. Ronnett. A plague threatens to cause suffering among these plantation overseers in Illinois. Their bosses' lawyers had successfully limited the task of defending against a certain kind of litigation for decades, but due to particular circumstances in Gus' case, that task may become onerous and expensive. It will be a plague, I think.
I mentioned Passover to Vik Gill, Margarete Ronnett, Joe Basso and Nurse Tim yesterday because it's time for the psychiatric Pharaoh to let slaves like Gus leave Egypt. I threatened these guys with this plague: a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The masters up in the big house will not be happy if such a petition is not quickly and easily dismissed.
Suddenly the masters may have to zealously defend habeas petitions because the overseers, by their admissions and omissions in Gus' case, rendered the processes of forensic mental health defective in several aspects required by law. They inadvertently proved that however lawful an original commitment may be, a slave may be constitutionally entitled to sudden, expedited discharge. And it's not only Gus: many psychiatric slaves are in the same situation. The plantations are losing control.
So I might spill an eleventh drop of wine from my cup tonight. I should not celebrate my freedom in complete disregard for its costs to others.
