If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals . . . We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs. We have no hope against the wall: it's too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us -- create who we are.

HARUKI MURAKAMI

The egg at the the Seder meal appears as a delicious and symbolic "appetizer," served peeled of its hard shell and, in most households, swimming in salt water representing the sea, source of life.

It seems that the egg, a longstanding symbol of fertility and the cycle of life and rebirth - of resurrection of life and nature in the spring after the harsh winter - is now a symbol of beginnings, of hope. It stands as a symbol of resilience to suffering. Most foods, when cooked, become softer and fall apart. The egg, however, gets tougher - hard boiled - the longer you cook it, an appropriate symbol of a people persecuted and "steeled by adversity" stubbornly resurrected as a nation determined to live anew.


haggadah Section: Koreich