In addition to eating matzah and refraining from leavened food, an essential mitzvah of Pesaẖ is Maggid, the telling of the Exodus story. Moshe our Teacher emphasizes this when he addresses the people of Israel before they leave Egypt.
“When you come to the land … you shall say to your children, ‘It is a Passover sacrifice to the Eternal, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt…’ (Ex. 12:25-27).”
“On that day you shall tell your child, ‘It is because of what the Eternal did for me when I came out of Egypt’ (Ex. 13:8).”
“…when your child asks, ‘What is this?’ you shall say, ‘With a mighty hand, the Eternal brought us out from Egypt, from the land of slavery’ (Ex. 13:14).”
After hundreds of years of enslavement, in the midst of the horrific final plague, Moshe does not direct the attention of the people to their immanent freedom. Moshe does not point them to the challenges of the journey immediately before them. Instead, he looks to a distant future in the Land of Promise and repeatedly tells the people to recount the Exodus story to future generations.
You know many of the ways the seder and the Haggadah use to convey a comprehensive Exodus experience: the four cups, the various steps of the seder, the two parts of Hallel, the eating of specific mitzvah foods, songs and stories. They are all part of the process of creating memory.
The stories are at the heart of the seder. They are centred around the Telling/Maggid, which interprets four verses from Deuteronomy to create a powerful multi-generational evening with memory of the past and anticipation of the future.
אֲרַמִּי֙אֹבֵ֣דאָבִ֔יוַיֵּ֣רֶדמִצְרַ֔יְמָהוַיָּ֥גָרשָׁ֖םבִּמְתֵ֣ימְעָ֑טוַֽיְהִי־שָׁ֕םלְג֥וֹיגָּד֖וֹלעָצ֥וּםוָרָֽב׃ My ancestor was a fugitive Aramian who went down to Egypt with meagre numbers and sojourned there; but there became a great and very populous nation. וַיָּרֵ֧עוּאֹתָ֛נוּהַמִּצְרִ֖יםוַיְעַנּ֑וּנוּוַיִּתְּנ֥וּעָלֵ֖ינוּעֲבֹדָ֥הקָשָֽׁה
The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed heavy labor upon us. וַנִּצְעַ֕קאֶל־האֱ-לֹהֵ֣יאֲבֹתֵ֑ינוּוַיִּשְׁמַ֤עה֙אֶת־קֹלֵ֔נוּוַיַּ֧רְאאֶת־עָנְיֵ֛נוּוְאֶת־עֲמָלֵ֖נוּוְאֶת־לַחֲצֵֽנוּ׃ We cried to the Eternal, the God of our ancestors, and the Eternal heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our oppression. וַיּוֹצִאֵ֤נוּה֙מִמִּצְרַ֔יִםבְּיָ֤דחֲזָקָה֙וּבִזְרֹ֣עַנְטוּיָ֔הוּבְמֹרָ֖אגָּדֹ֑לוּבְאֹת֖וֹתוּבְמֹפְתִֽים׃ The Eternal freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents.
Mishnah Pesaẖim states: They interpret from אֲרַמִּי֙אֹבֵ֣דאָבִ֔י until completing the whole passage. The Haggadah does not cite extensively the 15 chapters of Exodus that record the events of enslavement and liberation. Instead, the Maggid interprets verses that were originally associated with the ritual of bikkurim— first harvest.
Why select the verses from Devarim? It may have been the most popular and best known version. It also reviews the events with an emphasis on gratitude. Mishnah Pesaẖim says that a Jewish story has the structure of מתחילבגנות and מסייםבשבח (we begin with disgrace and conclude with praise) which the Talmud links to slavery/ עבדיםהיינוand idolatry/ מתחילהעובדיע״ז. I simply think that ארמיאובדאבי from Deuteronomy is the shortest version of the Exodus, so it encourages participants to expand the story.
Which part of the Exodus story should we emphasise? Erica Brown writes of the move from slavery to freedom.
The Haggadah asks us to recreate a story. In a festive mood, we tend to minimize the pain and move on quickly to redemption. But if we are to be true actors on this vast historic stage, we must try to embody, quite literally, what the experience of slavery was like.
The film Mudbound tells the story of two American soldiers who returned to their muddy southern farm after traumatic experiences in WW2. One is black and comes from a crop sharing family. The other is white and from the owners of the land. Their families don’t understand what they went through during the war and how the experience changed their perceptions of race and relationships. These former GIs bond. Ultimately, however, the heroism of the African-American is irrelevant to the Ku Klux Klan who is concerned not with what he did, but what his race was.
Erica Brown again:
If you want to understand slavery…. Imagine yourself in the body of the slave, the harshness of the labor on your shoulders. The thinness of a tunic that cannot protect you. The sores on a back that’s been whipped. The bent neck of the one knocked over. The coarseness of the hands. The mind twisted into obsequiousness for what seems like forever. …The body understands what the mind can never fathom: the way pain blinds us with its darkness, the darkness of a Treblinka and an Auschwitz. (4/4/2017— The Sigh of Slavery, http://www.ericabrown.com/articles/)
Joan Didion famously observed, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Identity is embedded in the stories we tell about ourselves and our families, in the narratives about our people and our nation. The stories we repeat and repeat imprint a particular identity on our community.
Not all haggadot ended the story the same way. Our Haggadah, which derives from the Geonim of Babylonia, highlights the debate between Rav and Shmuel whether the disgrace was slavery or idolatry. Our Haggadah finishes the Magid with a midrashic expansion of the verse, “וַיּוֹצִאֵ֤נוּה֙מִמִּצְרַ֔יִםבְּיָ֤דחֲזָקָה֙וּבִזְרֹ֣עַנְטוּיָ֔הוּבְמֹרָ֖אגָּדֹ֑לוּבְאֹת֖וֹתוּבְמֹפְתִֽים ~ The Eternal freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents.”
But in Eretz Yisrael, the conclusion of Maggid includes another verse which is absent from our Haggadah: וַיְבִאֵ֖נוּאֶל־הַמָּק֣וֹםהַזֶּ֑הוַיִּתֶּן־לָ֙נוּ֙אֶת־הָאָ֣רֶץהַזֹּ֔אתאֶ֛רֶץזָבַ֥תחָלָ֖בוּדְבָֽש God brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. For the Sages of the Land of Israel, the degradation was Yaakov leaving the Land, initially fleeing to Mesopotamia and later going down to Egypt, while the praise was the return to Eretz Yisrael.
Our stories determine our destiny. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once commented: “I speak as a member of a congregation whose founder was Abraham, and the name of my rabbi is Moses.” “I can never be lost. I know that I am a descendant of Abraham and am going to the time/place of redemption ... .”
In Western Europe and North America, we are witnessing a divisive debate about national narratives. Liberal democracy emphasizes the rights and status of the individual, but people develop identity based on their roots and experience in a particular community. That difference may explain some of the current cultural disruption in many countries. There is a conflict over national narratives and a fear that a distinctive story might be lost.
Israel, currently celebrating its 70th anniversary, is a democracy with a Jewish majority. You might imagine that its greatest challenges are weapons, soldiers and terrorists, military actions and lone-wolf attacks. But much of the conflict between the Jews of Israel and their Palestinian “cousins” is related to the conflicting narratives of these two people.
As we ritually retell of the Exodus, it is important to put ourselves into the flow of events. “In each generation, one is obligated to see oneself as having personally left Egypt.” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks fuses his personal identity and the mission of Judaism: “I am part of a people brought from slavery to build a society and a civilisation that celebrate freedom and responsibility.”
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Isaac Bashevis Singer reflected about storytelling:
The storyteller of our time … must be an entertainer of the spirit in the full sense of the word ... . There is no paradise for bored readers and no excuse for tedious literature that does not intrigue the reader, uplift his spirit, give him the joy and the escape that true art always grants. Nevertheless, it is also true that the serious writer of our time must be deeply concerned about the problems of [our] generation ... . As the son of a people who received the worst blows that human madness can inflict, I must brood about the forthcoming dangers.
For our sedarim, we are called upon to become master storytellers; to discuss and debate, to entertain and engage, to empathise, encourage and argue.
So, for your Seder tonight, let me leave you with four questions:
• What is your family story?
• Does it resonate with the master narrative of the Jewish people?
• Who will keep this story alive?
• What story do your children and grandchildren need to hear in this century?