Some Thoughts for Passover—”What Price Freedom?”

I'm sharing an essay I wrote in 1995 for the weekly newsletter of B'Nai Jeshurun, a synagogue congregation where I was then active, titled "What Price Freedom?" In it I sought to understand and explain why in the Passover narrative God continually hardens Pharaoh's heart, and why the plagues then descend on the Egyptians, right up to the tenth plague when their firstborn children die. To summarize…