This idea can help answer Abrabanel’s question. “Avadim hayinu” is the answer to the four questions: “Why is this night different from all other nights”. How does this answer why we are behaving differently many years later?

The answer is that we start with “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt”. Not “our fathers were slaves” we were! That is the intro to the next sentence we say immediately afterward: “If Hashem had not saved us from Egypt we, and our children and our children’s children would still be slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. Since we were “slaves”. Slavery is a hereditary status. There was no precedent before the exodus from Egypt that even an individual slave would escape his fate (Medrash). The Torah in Parshath Vaetchanan says that: Or has a G-d attempted to take one nation from within the other, through miracles, signs, as Hashem did for you”. We could say that if nor for the exodus from Egypt it never would have happened that any slaves in history would have been released. Primitive societies stayed the same for generation after generation. The Exodus from Egypt, which was then the main culture in the world, started turning the wheels of revolution. All future advance and revolution must be attributed to the Exodus from Egypt. Therefore, whether we are living in the land of Israel with the temple standing, or in complete contrast “celebrating” Passover in a concentration camp there is room to tell the story of the exodus from Egypt. If not for that we would never have had a temple rather we would still be slaves in Egypt. On the other hand if not for the exodus from Egypt there would not be a potential for redemption from the concentration camp either. The Exodus from Egypt is the inventor of the concept Exodus so much that it will be mentioned even in the days of Messiah as said by Chachamim in the Mishna Brachoth quoted later in the Haggadah!


haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story