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The Essence of Passover
Contributed by william kahan

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

'The Essence of Passover

:

Passover has a message for the conscience and the heart of all mankind. 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 on the stage of mankind by all who seek avenues to assert their condemnation of oppression and tyranny, by all who labor in the vineyard of the Lord searching for freedom and peace.

Although it is the Pharaoh of old who is the tyrant of the Haggadah, it is not he alone of whom we speak 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 God.

i
haggadah Section: Introduction
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