“Pharonic oppression, deliverance, Sinai, and Canaan are still with us as powerful memories shaping our perceptions of the political world. The “door of hope” is still open; things are not what they might be even when what they might be isn’t totally different from what they are. This is a central theme in Western thought, always present though elaborated in many different ways. We still believe, or many of us do, what the Exodus first taught, or what it has commonly been taken to teach about the meaning and possibility of politics and about its proper form:


  • First, that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt;
  • Second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land;
  • Third, that “the way to the land is through the wilderness.” There is no way to get there from here to there except by joining together and marching.

 —Michael Walzer


haggadah Section: Commentary / Readings
Source: Valley Beth Shalom Haggadah