Parashat Bo: Freedom Learned Before the Leaving

This week we read Parashat Bo, the third portion of the Book of Shemot (Exodus). The text places us at the final stage of Israel’s enslavement in Egypt: the last three plagues—locusts, darkness, and the death of the firstborn—and the immediate preparations for the people’s departure toward freedom, Yetziat Mitzrayim.

Yet to reduce Bo to a chronicle of punishments and miracles would be to miss its deepest message. Bo is not only the story of liberation; it is, above all, a pedagogy of freedom. The Torah does not teach us merely how to leave Egypt, but how not to carry Egypt within us once we finally leave.

One of the central concepts of the parashah is Leil Shimurim—the Night of Vigil:

“It is a night of vigil for Adonai, to bring them out of the land of Egypt; this same night is Adonai’s, a vigil for all the children of Israel throughout their generations” (Shemot / Exodus 12:42).

Rashi explains that this is the night God had “awaited,” ever since the days of the Patriarchs, to fulfill the promise of redemption. Ibn Ezra highlights a different nuance: it is the night in which God protected the people of Israel from the tenth plague. These readings complement one another. It is a night both anticipated and guarded.

The word shimurim does not refer only to protection, but also to vigilance—to an active waiting. That is why Leil Shimurim is also the night of telling, the night on which, generation after generation, we retell how we were redeemed. As Moses commands:

“Remember the days of old, understand the years of generation after generation; ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will recount it to you” (Devarim / Deuteronomy 32:7).

Jewish freedom begins with storytelling. A people that stops telling its story slowly begins to lose it.

Another key term appears just a few verses later:

“Today you are going out, in the month of Aviv” (Shemot / Exodus 13:4).

Aviv is often translated as “spring,” but its meaning is more precise: it refers to the moment when the barley is tender and green, just beginning to ripen. Rashbam (Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir) explains that this ensures that Pesach will always be celebrated in spring, the season of renewal.

This is no minor agricultural detail. The Torah is making an essential statement: the Exodus is not merely a change of place; it is a new beginning of life. Just as nature begins to bloom again, the people of Israel are reborn after slavery.

That is why Nisan is the first month of the year according to the Torah. Everything begins with freedom. Everything begins with the ability to decide about ourselves—our time, our beliefs, our direction. Any form of oppression that denies those choices denies freedom and denies the possibility of a true beginning.

Even Western language preserves this intuition. Spring comes from the Latin prima vera—the first greening, the first glimpse of what is new. Seeing with fresh eyes. Being renewed. In that spirit, as Jaime Barylko z”l—a deeply influential Jewish-Argentine thinker—used to say: Pesach is not a memory of the past but an instruction for the present, a call to leave, again and again, our own forms of bondage.

In Parashat Bo, redemption is neither individual nor heroic. Every household must participate in the sacrifice; every family must mark its door. No one is left out. The Exodus was a collective and inclusive responsibility, even embracing those who were not originally part of the People of Israel but who, on that epic night, recognized what our tradition calls ol malchut shamayim—the acceptance of the sovereignty of the Creator over all existence.

That same spirit lives on in every Seder night. We do not celebrate Pesach alone, but together, opening our tables even to those who are not members of the Jewish people yet wish to join and share the experience, as the Torah itself implies. The Jewish future is not built from the comfort of the sidelines, but through active commitment.

The doors marked with blood are not a magical gesture. They are a declaration of identity. Doors are thresholds—places of decision. We place mezuzot not only on our homes, but also on synagogues and even on our places of work, because these too are spaces of choice, of transition, of responsibility as a people. Every transition—personal, communal, historical—asks us who we are and where we are heading. Silence, apathy, and neutrality are also choices.

The Torah insists that the Exodus take place bechipazon, in haste. Pesach is not only remembrance; it is training—being ready to move when history demands it. Leaving behind comfortable certainties, familiar narratives, safe ground. Freedom rarely arrives neatly packaged; more often it breaks in mixed with fear, grief, and urgency.

And alongside the command to leave comes another demand: to remove the chametz. Not only from our homes, but from our lives. Chametz symbolizes what is inflated, stale, no longer life-giving. Removing it is an ethic: letting go of unchecked ego, old excuses, silences that are no longer innocent. For something new to be born, space must be made.

All of this culminates in a commandment that crosses generations:

“And you shall tell your child on that day, saying: it is because of this that Adonai acted for me when I went out of Egypt” (Shemot / Exodus 13:8).

“For me.” Not as a historical datum, but as a living consciousness. Saying “I went out of Egypt” does not describe a fact; it creates identity. In Jewish tradition, speech is not merely descriptive—it is constructive. To believe (leha’amin) and to create (livro) share the same root. Words can liberate or enslave, dignify or degrade.

That is why telling the story is an obligation. Because words create worlds.

In these days, close to January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, this command carries even greater weight. In our tradition, zachor—remember—is not passive; it is an ethical imperative. We remember Egypt to recognize oppression. We remember the Shoah so that hatred, indifference, and silence are never normalized. To remember is to resist. To remember is to choose, again and again, the side of life.

Parashat Bo also speaks of light and darkness. One of the plagues was total darkness over Egypt, while—as the Torah emphasizes—the children of Israel had light. Hasidic teaching explains that within each person dwell two souls: the animal soul, tied to ego and to a darkness that sees only itself; and the divine soul, which reveals that each of us is part of a greater whole. From one comes division; from the other, unity.

Toward the end of the narrative, Moses and Pharaoh face their final confrontation. Pharaoh agrees to let the people go—but on one condition: only the men may leave.

Moses answers firmly:

“With our young and with our elders we will go” (Shemot / Exodus 10:9).

Both knew the truth: the future of a people lies in its youth. Pharaoh wanted to keep them; Moses knew that without them there is no road forward. As Rabbi Yosef Kahanman taught, quoting the Talmud:

“Any city in which children do not study Torah will ultimately be destroyed” (Talmud, Shabbat 119b).

And he concluded with words as stark as they are true: “A child is called an orphan when he has no parents; a people is called orphaned when it has no youth.”

Investing in our young people is the strongest and surest investment in our continuity.

Parashat Bo reminds us that freedom begins before the exit—but it never truly ends. Every generation finds itself standing again before that same night: between fear and decision, between darkness and light, between comfort and responsibility.

Leaving Egypt was a moment.

Learning to recreate it—that remains the challenge.

May we face that challenge with integrity and resolve, always in community, building community together.

Shabbat Shalom u’Mevorach

Rabbi Gustavo Geier