Monday night, as Passover begins, Jews around the world celebrate their ancestors’ liberation from slavery in ancient Egypt. That liberty was hardly cost-free. Participants in the Seder will recount the 10 plagues by symbolically dipping a finger in their glass of wine and removing a drop, one for each debacle. This recalls the destruction that paved the way to freedom.

The Hebrew Bible recounts that after the Israelites made it across the Red Sea, God kept the waters parted to lure the Egyptian army chasing them. Once the army was surrounded by the sea, God let go, as it were, and the walls of water collapsed. Safely on dry ground, the Israelites broke out in song and dance as they bore witness to the drowning of Egyptian soldiers and chariots. Angels in heaven followed suit to rejoice together with the Israelites. But, as stated in Tractate Sanhedrin, a treatise in the Talmud that details the laws and lore of Judaism, God immediately rebuked them. The “Holy One, Blessed be He, said to them: My handiwork are drowning in the sea, and you are reciting a song before Me?”

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