Ever since we got married 27 years ago, I’ve celebrated Passover with my wife’s family. (No, I’m not a neglectful son … we celebrate Rosh Hashanah each year with my family.) And, like many, our family has built beautiful seder memories. My most enduring revolves around my wife’s late grandmother, Golda, who passed away six years ago at the age of 102.

Coincidentally or not, when we went around the table reciting from the Haggadah, it was invariably Golda who read the passage describing how we were lifted “from slavery to freedom … and from deep darkness to great light.” These words are in the Haggadah so that we might imagine what it’s like to be enslaved by circumstance and hardship.

But for Golda, this was not a flight of imagination. Those words mirrored her life’s story. She started life in Poland, fleeing with her husband and two sons during World War II to Siberia and then Kazakhstan, spent time after the war in a displaced persons camp in Germany, and eventually immigrated to Canada. Much of Golda’s family perished in the Holocaust. But she and her husband built a wonderful new life in Canada and, later, in Belgium. Golda personally experienced the journey described in the Haggadah from deep darkness to great light.

I used to think that stories like Golda’s belonged to Jews of another generation. But sadly, as we know, that’s not the case. In 2016, we’re still very much in the rescue business, including the recent secret airlift of Yemenite Jews to Israel, and a similar rescue for Yemenite and Syrian Jews to New York. In fact, imagining oppression is still very much a privilege, given the many in the world who don’t have to make believe.

Thankfully, today, we serve as a global safety net for Jews around the world. We are a Jewish community that rescues. We feed the hungry. We counsel the traumatized. We invite to our table those who might otherwise feel unwelcome. What started at Exodus continues in our time — not with pillars of smoke and plagues, but with the singular dedication of a community that provides for those in need.

It’s the story of Passover made very real today — thanks to you.

So as we sit down with family and friends to our seders this Friday evening, let us be grateful that we only imagine oppression. And let us recommit to helping this generation’s Goldas so that they, too, may make the journey from deep darkness to great light.

Shabbat shalom and chag Pesach sameach