Two years ago, I gave a sermon about the plague of darkness. It was a difficult time back then. The Covid vaccine was just becoming available, and I couldn’t help thinking about the people who died. It was as if we had lived through the final two plagues – darkness and death – right in our own time.

We had lived through a time when the nation was torn, with one side concerned about saving lives and the other with getting the economy open. And one quote stood out to me – a statement from the Secretary of Labor at a time when Covid was running rampant. “Let’s reopen the economy,” he said, “the human stock are ready.”

All through history, there have been people who regarded others as livestock. And this is the plague of darkness.

Years ago, Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman gave a lecture on the Jewish understanding of kiddushah, holiness. “The word kiddushah literally means dedicated or set apart,” he told us. And then he gave us some examples from the Talmud.

“The Hebrew word for marriage is kiddoshin,” he said, because the bride and groom are dedicated to each other. And according to the Talmud, you are not allowed to use a Torah scroll as a spade to dig with, because a Torah scroll is holy – God created it for a special purpose.

And finally, Rabbi Hoffman got to the most important example. “You are not allowed to use people, because people, too, are holy. God created every person for a special purpose.”

This, said one Chassidic master, was the true plague of darkness: that the Egyptians thought that they could use people. The Egyptians lost all ability to empathize with their neighbors. But the Israelites know that we are all connected, that all of us are one. “When we know that all of us are one”, he teaches, “there can be no darkness”. 

It’s been two years to the day since I wrote that sermon, and we again face a time of darkness. A judge in Texas is considering banning a safe, medically proven drug that has been used successfully by women seeking abortions. And there is a bill in South Carolina that would make having an abortion a capital offense. If these changes become law, more than half of our population will become slaves.

As Passover gets closer, we need to change our language. The word “slavery” needs to reenter our public discourse, and we need to be honest. A small group is trying to turn the rest of us into slaves. We cannot rest until all people are free, until we know that all people are one.

Heschel taught that every human being is a kind of reminder of God, and that all things are like traces of God’s footprints in a barren desert. And if we forget that for a moment, the world becomes dark.