Were we slaves in Egypt?  Did the Exodus happen?

We were certainly second-class citizens, non-citizens, with no rights, barred and confined, exiled and deported.

Imagine sand instead of black earth.  Put down pyramids and the cities of Ramses and Pithom.  Let the Nile run past Warsaw.  It’s almost the time of the annual inundation.  A boy with reddish payos is feeding the storks.

There was a Moses, Mordechai Anielewicz, and a Pharoah, Heinrich Himmler.  A rebellion and attempted breakout.

But this time fire and typhus and starvation, soldiers and police, were unleashed in stages against the Jews.  And Exodus led to the camps.

Now let alligators glide in the Hudson, and cats dressed in jewels hunt in Morningside Park. 

Huddled in dorms, the Jewish students dip the parsley in salt water, consider the shankbone. 

The mezuzah on the doorpost.  To take it in or leave it out proudly?  

Many of the students eat matzah before packing for home.

This is what it’s like when the crowd wants blood.  When they can’t distinguish between a few Jews-only politicians and settlers on the other side of the world, and the chemistry major with tzitzit, his head full of formulas.

When they pound the windows of the hummus restaurant, and make gestures of throat-slitting.

When they protest genocide, but would commit it.

It makes you want to leave for Tel Aviv or Tzfat, to be ingathered and protected by some kind of strong hand and outstretched arm. 

(Though even there the land runs with our blood, and the enemy is all around.)

We are heading…somewhere.  Hopefully the terrorists will drown.  But the protesters will have to cross with us.  And we will have to cross with the families of dead Gazans.