When Jews around the world gather to celebrate the holiday of Passover, which commemorates our bondage as slaves in Egypt and our liberation from the Pharaoh, at the center of our observance is the seder plate. Sitting at the middle of the table, it is laden with several different foodstuffs that remind us of our experience, our memory, and our history.
One of these items is a beitzah—an egg, specifically a roasted one. There are many reasons this boiled and burnt egg is part of the Passover meal, but each year, my mother regaled us with her favorite. Every other food, she would tell us, falls apart when placed into hot water—but not the egg. Boil an egg and it only knits together more firmly.
So, too, have the Jews: Down the millennia, constantly placed in hot water, the Jewish people have only bonded together more tightly, just like the miraculous egg. That makes the beitzah a perfect metaphor for the Jewish experience.
And to take my mother’s story one step further, it puts me in mind of the resistance to Donald Trump. The stooges and lackeys working their hardest to damage America and the world in the name of Trumpism only understand power and violence, and they think that lashing out at opponents of the regime will cause us to cower and splinter.
Only the exact opposite has happened. Every attack, every outrage, every insult, every attempt to divide us has only pulled the resistance more securely together—and brought more people into the movement to fight Trump each and every day. Our enemies will continue to assault us, but they will only be astounded by what results.
We are indivisible. We grow stronger. We are the egg.