Ari Ratner: A Passover to Remember -- for Egypt

Ari Ratner is a former appointee at the Obama administration State Department, where he worked on the U.S. response to the revolution in Egypt and the broader Arab Spring. Twitter: @amratner.

Sundown Friday marks the beginning of Passover, the commemoration of the Jews' emancipation from enslavement in ancient Egypt.

This year Passover falls on a day of enormous significance in the struggle for freedom in modern Egypt — April 6. That date is synonymous with the April 6 Youth Movement — formed in 2008 and named for the date of a planned strike to support Egyptian workers — that became the backbone of last year's Tahrir revolution that toppled Egypt's most recent pharaoh, Hosni Mubarak.

As Jews sit down for Passover Seder, the coincidence of these dates should remind us that — on this night and all others — the struggle for freedom in Egypt is one deeply linked to our own as Jews. And that even as Egypt's political transition remains murky, Jews — and indeed all Americans — have a moral stake in its outcome....