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01 / 04 / 26
Amir J. Ohadi and Rabbi Lara Haft Yom-Tov
Every year, as spring arrives, Jewish communities around the world gather around the Seder table to read from the Haggadah, the ancient text retelling the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. At its heart is a moment of miraculous passage: the splitting of the Red Sea, through which an enslaved people crossed from bondage into freedom. The Haggadah commands us not only to remember, but to experience it in our own time, to see ourselves, in every generation, as those once enslaved, and now called to act.
As leaders engaged in interfaith work, we find this command profoundly urgent, because millions remain on the wrong side, still waiting to pass over.
According to the UN, over 50 million people today live in conditions of modern slavery, more than at any point in recorded history. Some 28 million are trapped in forced labour within supply chains that produce the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the devices we carry. Human trafficking generates an estimated $150 billion annually, making it one of the most profitable criminal enterprises on earth.
Increasingly, this exploitation is being driven by the climate crisis. As floods, droughts, and extreme weather displace communities across the Global South, climate refugees are forced to move without legal pathways or protection. They become precisely the population that traffickers seek: uprooted, undocumented, and unseen. Climate displacement does not merely correlate with trafficking, it actively creates the conditions for it. In this sense, we are generating new forms of enslavement through environmental neglect and failure to act.
The Passover narrative speaks directly to this moment. Moses did not wait for political consensus to demand “let my people go!” The Rabbis of the Talmud teach that the miracle of the parted sea was not granted to those who remained passive on the shore, but rather came as the first brave souls leapt forward into the sea, toward freedom. Liberation requires moral courage, collective movement, and leadership.
That same courage is called for today: from governments, who must strengthen supply chain legislation; from corporations, who must look beyond their immediate suppliers; and from faith communities and civil society, who must refuse silence. The Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) each uphold the liberation of the oppressed as a sacred duty. These are not separate teachings, but converging calls to the same action.
The miracle we need is not supernatural. It is the awakening of conscience and the opening of a passage through which the exploited and displaced may walk toward safety and dignity. That passage will not open by itself.
Amir J. Ohadi is Chair of the Environment and Sustainability Committee at the Barnet Multi-Faith Forum, a Founding Member of the UK Greenhouse Gas Removal Future Leaders Network, and Advisor for Strategic Partnerships and Green Transition at Stop Human Trafficking Worldwide CIC.
Rabbi Lara Haft Yom-Tov is a Rabbi of New North London Synagogue, in Finchley, and works with young adults in the Masorti movement.
