Pesach and the Rebirth of Israel

“Who, then, wrote the script of the Jewish drama? God or the Jewish people? Or was it, as the sages taught, an inextricable combination of both: God as He was heard by the people, and the people as they responded to God? Isaac Bashevis Singer came close when he said, ‘God is a writer and we are both the heroes and the readers.’ One thing is certain, that without Pesach, celebrated over the centuries, the State of Israel would not have been born. The prophets were right: the Exodus of the past contained within it the Exodus of the future; and I, born in the same year as the state, can only say, ‘Blessed are You, O Lord… who has given life, sustained us, and brought us to this time.’”

The Jonathan Sacks Haggada, Essays, Pesach and the Rebirth of Israel, p. 68