At The Seder: Telling It Like It Was, And Still Is

“Israel is waste, bare of seed,” reads an inscription attributed by archeologists to the Ancient Egyptian King Merneptah on a granite stele erected by King Amenhotep III.

It is a wonderful irony that the Jewish people, the singular object of persistent attempts at obliteration, have survived with integrity to their origins, while the ancient Egyptians—a powerful, ruling people—have not. And how we enjoy the irony, celebrate it, study it, and share it. Especially on Passover, when we trace our nationhood back to its early beginnings and peel away the layers of easy plot for clues to our longevity.

Ancient Egypt built huge pyramids that they imagined would guarantee their immortality. Tourists marvel at the pyramids, and then go home. Ancient Israel, on the other hand, invested its hopes for eternal life in its children. “V’higadeta l’vincha” and you shall tell your child, is a Divine command. It is a Jewish tradition that began in Biblical times and continues to be practiced today, in the day-to-day lives of Jews. With every Shema Yisrael that a toddler is taught to recite, with every letter of the Alef Bet that a youngster learns to identify, with every mitzvah a child masters, our posterity is assured.

At Passover, the tradition of transmission itself is celebrated. The Seder night, with all its customs designed to pique the curiosity of children, is a lesson in intergenerational communication. The Haggadah begins with thoughtful consideration for the four character types and how the elders may best engage their interest in the story of our past, as they received it from their parents, and they from theirs, back through the ages. It is an evening of Jewish continuity in the making.

What is the story we tell our children on the Seder night? We tell them that once we were slaves, but then G-d redeemed us. We talk about the miracles that G-d performed for us so that our ancestors would become free people, and we describe in great detail the drama of our Exodus. Always, we credit G-d who led us to freedom with an “outstretched hand, and a strong arm.” In fact, in the first of the 10 Commandments, G-d identifies himself in reference to the Exodus: “I am the Lord your G-d who took you out of the land of Egypt.”

The Exodus story is so compelling it has served as the model for subsequent freedom movements in history. Not all, of course, were as successful. In some instances, as in the history of American slavery, emancipated slaves were hardly free, if by free we mean empowered with self-determination. While negative liberty—to use a term coined by a modern philosopher—was a critical first step in achieving freedom, the effects of slavery would take years, sometimes generations to wash away. Positive freedom, the kind that empowered former slaves to rise up to a position of self-mastery, required the hand of G-d.

In the human ideal, it is ultimately positive liberty that we strive for: a kind of affirmative action that necessarily comes from above, that empowers the individual to be an agent of creative change within oneself and one’s society.

In his philosophy of Passover, the Lubavitcher Rebbe explored both the negative and the positive in the Festival’s main commandments: we must avoid all leavened foods—an expression of the self achieving liberation from the confines of egotistical drives represented by chametz, and the mitzvah to eat matzah, a positive command from Above that concretizes our aspirations for an elevated existence.

This is what made the Exodus so extraordinary a story. The Jews should have taken many years to emerge from the trauma and emotional wretchedness of their enslavement. And yet, within a span of 49 days, they made the radical transition from abject slaves to a people endowed with a Divine mission: to elevate the society of human beings, and by their example, serve as a light unto the nations.

Passover is a joyous holiday, but it is not jovial. It requires serious preparation—not only for the minutiae involved in the Seder plans, in ridding our homes of chametz and outfitting the kitchen and dining room for Passover, but in finding people who have not made plans to be at the Seder table, and inviting them to join one.

Hence the countless Chabad seders around the world, where thousands of Jews met others and shared in the timeless story of a people that endures. Together they drank the four cups of redemption and asked the four questions that inspired them to ponder the possibilities for their contribution to the enduring story of the Jewish people.

Wishing you a happy Passover!