My father-in-law rearranges furniture, brings out extra tables and chairs, and lugs home cases of kosher wine and tubs of chopped liver. My mother-in-law polishes goblets and horseradish bowls, stirs bathtubs of chicken soup, and brushes up on the school grades, hobbies, and musical instruments of the distant cousins and grandchildren-of-estranged-uncles who comprise the seventy or so guests. Bringing our two toddlers into this environment, with their assorted blankies, sippy cups, failed haircuts, and scratched lullaby CDs, only heightens the drama. “Why are these nights different?” the hagadah asks. In many ways, they’re not. This year, as we arrived on our annual pilgrimage, I was also thinking about the connections between Passover and the United States. Is Moses still relevant in America today? In an age when secularism, globalism, and pluralism threaten to undermine the Bible’s influence, does the three-thousand-year-old story from the ancient Near East still have the ability to shape public debate?
