we tell. It remains one of the most counterintuitive passages in all of religious literature.

Moses is addressing the Israelites just days before their release. They'd been exiles for

210 years. After an initial period of affluence and ease, they'd been oppressed, enslaved,

and their male children killed in an act of

slow genocide. Now, after signs and wonders and a series of plagues that have brought the greatest

empire of the ancient world to its knees, they were about to go free. Yet Moses doesn't talk about

freedom, or the land flowing with milk and honey or the journey

they'll have to undertake through the desert. Instead, counter-intuitively and no less than three

times, he turns to the distant future when the journey is complete and the people free at last

are in their own land.

And what he talks about is not the land itself, or the society they'll have to build,

or even the demands and responsibilities of freedom.

Instead, he talks about education specifically about the duty of parents to their children.

He speaks about the questions children may ask when the epic events that are about to happen are at best a distant memory.

He tells the Israelites to do what Jews have done from then until now.

Tell your children the story.

Do it in the maximally effective way.

Reenact the drama of exile and exodus, slavery and freedom.

Get your children to ask questions.

Manish Dana, make sure you tell the story as your own,

not as some dry account of history.

Say that the way you live and the ceremonies you observe are

...