As we recite the Haggadah, which retells the Exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt, we have the strange feeling that, once again, we are living in Biblical times.

More than any generation before, my contemporaries have known not only a paroxysm of evil but also the realization of a promise; not only the Kingdom of Night but also the rebirth of a dream; not only the horror of Nazism but also the end of the nightmare; not only the deaths of Babi-Yar but also the defiance of young Russian Jews, the first to challenge the Kremlin's police state.

Sometimes the sheer speed of events makes us reel. History advances at a dizzying pace. Man has conquered space but not his own heart. Have we learned nothing? It seems so. Witness the wars that rage all over the globe, the acts of terror that strike down the innocent, the children who are dying of hunger and disease in Africa and Asia every day. Why is there so much hatred in the world? Why is there so much indifference to hatred, to suffering, to the anguish of others?

I love Passover because for me it is a cry against indifference, a cry for compassion.


haggadah Section: Nirtzah
Source: Elie Wiesel