Sefat Emet wondered about the words in the Haggadah, “In every generation, we are obligated to see ourselves as if we went out of Egypt”.

In every generation, said Sefat Emet, God brings us out of Egypt, but we don’t always see it. The purpose of the seder, he said, is to train us, to open our eyes, so that the memory of Egypt will always be with us. And perhaps, said Sefat Emet, that memory will help us through dark times.

So on this very dark year, I want to tell you what God did for me when he brought me out of the land of Egypt.

I had the kind of childhood where kids wind up committing suicide or driving into a ditch somewhere.  But every Shabbat, my childhood rabbi would open the ark, and he would say, “In this scroll is every secret of our people from Sinai to now.”  Somehow, I believed him.  And at the age of eight, I began studying Torah. And I learned that our ancestors had suffered, too.

Our ancestors were slaves in Egypt for almost 400 years, I learned – so long that they started to accept it.  They were so deadened by the hard labor that they couldn’t even cry out.  And then a miracle happened. “The people sighed from the hard labor”, the Torah tells us, “And God heard their cry, and God said, “I will bring them out.”

For the first time in my life, I discovered hope.  If we cry out, I realized, if we find the courage to express our pain, then God will hear us, and somehow, with the help of God, we will find a better life.

Its been 65 years since I began studying Torah. And this year, in my final semester of rabbinical school, I got to study Torah in a whole new way. Sitting there, studying with a great teacher, I got to look back on words that changed my life – the words that taught my eight year-old self how to cry out, how to have faith, and how to aspire for something better.

My eight year-old self could have never imagined that moment.

And last night, as we read the story about they ancient rabbis who held a seder together at B’nai Brak, my wife put her hand on my shoulder. “Next month”, she said, “you’ll be a rabbi too.”

Thank you, God, for bringing me out of the land of Egypt.