Freedom is the easy part. Knowing what to do with it is harder. Parshat Bo begins at that uneasy moment, when a people is about to leave Egypt and has no real experience of what freedom demands.
That tension shapes the parsha. As the Israelites prepare to leave Egypt, the Torah makes an unexpected move. Instead of focusing only on the drama of the Exodus, it stops to issue commands. Surprisingly, the commandment given to the Jewish people does not concern the fundamentals of Jewish faith, but focuses on time: “This month shall be for you the beginning of months.”
Why is this the first mitzvah ever given to the nation? Because slaves live on someone else’s schedule; only free people are responsible for their own calendar. By commanding Israel to mark time for itself, the Torah teaches that mastery of time lies at the heart of freedom—something elusive in our frantic modern lives.
However, the parsha quickly makes clear that freedom demands more than just control of the calendar. As the Torah turns to family, it outlines how each household should prepare its own Passover offering inside its own home. But no single family redeems itself alone. Because every family acts at the same time and according to the same instructions, their separate actions become a single communal one. The Torah thus frames freedom not as individual flight but as collective movement. Liberation demands that a people move together, with discipline and purpose.
Yet even unified action cannot secure freedom on its own. Without teaching, freedom fades. This is why the Torah repeatedly commands parents to tell the story to their children: “On that day you shall tell your child, ‘This is because of what God did for me when I left Egypt’” (13:8). “When your child asks you tomorrow, saying, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall reply, ‘With a mighty hand, God brought us out from Egypt, the house of bondage’” (13:14). A freedom that no one remembers—and no one retells—cannot last.
Here the Torah anticipates a defining feature of the Seder night. These verses later form the foundation of the four sons in the Passover Haggadah. The Torah recognizes that children ask different kinds of questions—curious, resistant, simple, or silent—and demands that adults respond to each one. Education requires attentiveness, sensitivity, and the willingness to meet each child where they are.
This is how memory takes root. Rituals create questions. When a child encounters practices that break from the ordinary, such as on the Seder night—eating unleavened bread, dipping vegetables in salt water, opening the door for Elijah—curiosity emerges, and explanation renews memory. Ritual is the engine of remembrance.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argued that memory is not just nostalgia but a way of crafting identity: “Without memory there is no identity, and without identity we are cast adrift into a sea of chance.” In an age of fragmented attention and fragile historical awareness, this lesson is especially urgent.
The Israelites left Egypt in haste, but they did not leave unprepared. The Torah insists that freedom without structure collapses, whereas freedom anchored in memory endures. Parshat Bo reframes liberation not as the end of slavery, but as the beginning of responsibility—to claim time, to act in unison, and to teach the meaning of freedom to those who come next.
It also presses the question back on each of us: who is setting my calendar, and what do my days actually make room for? When we prioritize what matters most – family, learning, shared rituals, and sustained conversation about our tradition – we do not place constraints on freedom, but shape the way freedom takes root and lasts.
Hass Robinson is carrying out Doctoral research into the attitudes of teenage Jewish Day School students. She is a member of the first cohort of Rabbi Sacks Scholars.
This essay was written as part of our collaboration with The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Sacks Scholars.
