The People-Forming Passover

The essay below is adapted from Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus by Leon R. Kass, forthcoming from Yale University Press in January 2021.

The biblical book of Exodus, writes Kass in his Introduction, “not only recounts the founding of the Israelite nation, one of the world’s oldest and most consequential peoples, . . . but also sheds light on enduring questions about nation building and peoplehood.” His scintillating, profound, and meticulously close reading of Exodus, “one of humankind’s most important texts,” masterfully draws out, line by line and chapter by chapter, its enduring moral, philosophical, and political significance for its time and ours.

In our excerpted essay, Kass focuses on the events of the night before and the morning of the Israelites’ departure from Egypt—the events rehearsed each year at the Passover table—and on their significance in the formation of the Jewish people and nation. Its appearance here follows by almost seven years the first monthly essay in the then-newly founded Mosaic:“The Ten Commandments: Why the Decalogue Matters,” by Leon R. Kass (June 2013). As we took pride in publishing that early taste of a larger study-in-progress, we take pride in presenting this offering from the now-completed work.