As a rabbi, I probably hear more jokes and complaints about "Jewish guilt" than most people do. There's the long-suffering mother — "Don't worry about me... I'll just sit here in the dark." Mothers became the recurring face of jokes like these because in many immigrant families, they were the ones managing the household, raising the children, and voicing both sacrifice and expectation aloud, which made them an easy character for comedians to draw on.

What is “a controversy for the sake of heaven”? It is a disagreement driven by a sincere search for the common good, rather than ego or a desire to win.

We know that Passover calls on us to "love the stranger," words that carry urgent weight today, as we witness immigrants and citizens alike being detained, jailed, or worse, targeted by the very fear of the stranger our tradition warns against. Yet we must also ask, who around us is oppressed in ways we have never noticed, or never allowed ourselves to notice?