Each year in the weeks leading up to Passover, I sit down with my children, one on one, for something I’ve come to cherish deeply: preparing a personal d’var Torah ahead of our family seder. It’s become a quiet tradition in our home, time carved out not for homework or logistics but for Torah. For ideas.
As my son Jake and I began to think about the topic for this year’s Torah thought, we turned to the Haggadah for inspiration. What we struck was the proverbial jackpot of ideas, where Torah and family history are intertwined. We focused on the one phrase that seems to sum up the story of Yetziat Mitzrayim, the Exodus: B’yad chazakah, “With a strong hand.” The Torah uses this expression repeatedly to describe how God delivered the Israelites from bondage. But where was that strong hand in the actual story, and what does it really mean?
The common understanding of the “strong hand” is power, physical force. After all, the Ten Plagues devastated the Egyptian people, ultimately shattering Pharaoh’s will and leading to the Exodus. Can that be considered the yad chazakah, or can we understand the concept slightly differently, framed as God’s metaphysical might over the physical world?
As Jake and I spoke more, we noticed something else: that the actual redemption, geulah in Hebrew, was not a moment of destruction but of loving creation. In fact, the Exodus marks the birth of the Nation of Israel. Perhaps, the yad chazakah is the hand that elevated the Children of Israel as they exited Egypt, to the status of a nation complete with a national destiny.
So, we asked, was it both? Was the same yad chazakah that smote Egypt with disastrous plagues the hand that provided guidance, protection and tenderness to the newly established nation?
That duality sparked a memory.
When I was a boy, I would sit with my maternal grandfather, Myron Mazurek, and listen, spellbound, as he told the story of his own exodus. Near the end of the Holocaust, after surviving the inferno of Europe, the Jews in the Soviet Union had a small window of opportunity to leave or be trapped. He and the surviving members of his immediate family embarked on their version of Yetziat Mitzrayim (“Exodus from Egypt”)—their passage from tyranny to freedom. This time, instead of a split sea, they fled by train.
Along the tracks to their freedom, my great-grandmother, Michlah Rivka, baked matzah in haste, just as our ancestors had done in Egypt thousands of years ago. My grandfather, ever the documentarian, captured the moment in an iconic photograph. In it, you see a group of Jewish refugees baking their bread of affliction. My great-grandmother, whom my daughter Rebecca is named for, is wearing an apron, her eyes focused on the ultimate goal: survival. My great-uncle Julius, just a boy, stands nearby. This image represents the duality of our nation. One where pain and suffering are mirrored by a vehicle of salvation.
Even as that image sits in our family’s memory as a symbol of survival, I cannot look at it without thinking of the other trains. The ones that ran with German precision toward Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobibor. The ones that delivered countless numbers of our people not to redemption, but to annihilation.
What, then, is the meaning of a train? What is the moral compass of iron and steam—of machinery that, in one instance, was used in the service of destruction, and in another, of compassion and salvation? Perhaps both were versions of the biblical yad chazakah.
That moral paradox gave rise to another reflection, one that we feel every day in our lives here in Efrat. How do we, as a people, wield power today? How do we carry our strength? With what kind of hand?
This is the deeper meaning of yad chazakah—a hand that can destroy but chooses to redeem. A power that is wielded with conscience.
Today, we live in a world where the Jewish people are no longer powerless. The modern State of Israel, reborn from the ashes of the Shoah, possesses one of the most capable and advanced armies on Earth. Yet it is this very army that also carries a burden few others do: to remain moral while confronting those who would destroy it.
This, too, is a yad chazakah. It is the lion’s mouth that can crush its prey, but more often carries its cubs gently in its jaws to safety. The Israel Defense Forces is often referred to as the most moral army in the world—not as a slogan, but as an aspiration, constantly measured against impossible standards. In recent months, we’ve heard much about might. But perhaps now, as we gather around our seders, we must remember that the truest might is restraint. The greatest strength lies in choosing compassion when vengeance would be easier.
As Jake and I absorbed these lessons, I realized something: We are not just transmitting stories. We are passing down values. From my grandfather to me, and now from me to my children. In every generation, we are commanded to see ourselves as though we left Egypt. In my family, that commandment is lived: through a black-and-white photograph, through whispered recollections of survival, and now, through an annual learning ritual between father and child.
The story of the Exodus isn’t just history. It is a blueprint for moral power. A reminder that strength—real strength—is never about domination. It is about choosing mercy when justice is warranted. It is about leading with both courage and compassion.
This year, may we all find the strength to wield our hands with care, with conscience and with love.