Passover has a message for the conscience and the heart of all people. It commemorates the deliverance of a people from degrading slavery, from cruel and inhuman tyranny. 

Although we, who mouth the words and perform the ritual, are reliving an epoch which is peculiar to Jewish history, the drama that is Passover is no longer ours alone. Its enactment is not confined to the dining rooms of our homes alone; it has been embraced by the world at large, and is continually being reenacted by all who seek avenues to assert their condemnation of oppression and tyranny, by all who labor in the vineyard of our Sovereign, searching for freedom and peace.

Although it is Pharaoh of old who is the tyrant of the Haggadah, it is not he alone of who we speak of tonight. We speak this evening of other tyrants and other tyrannies as well.

We speak of the tyranny of poverty, and the tyranny of privation,

of the tyranny of wealth, and the tyranny of war,

of the tyranny of power, and the tyranny of despair,

of the tyranny of disease, and the tyranny of time,

of the tyranny of ignorance, and the tyranny of color.

To all these tyrannies do we address ourselves this evening. Passover brands them all as abominations in the sight of G-d.


haggadah Section: Introduction
Source: The Cohen Family Passover Haggadah: The Feast of Freedom