This text has another peculiarity: it is not only a story.  It wants to be the reenactment of a living memory.

Why commemorate at all? Why not simply celebrate freedom? This is because freedom can bring with it the forgetfulness of bondage.  Freedom can make one smug.  Freedom is so fundamental that once free, we can easily forget what it is to be unfree, what it is like to be arrested at checkpoints, to see one’s land grabbed and confiscated, to see courts always side with the strong rather than with the just, to be denied the permit to work or travel. Yes, freedom can bring smugness and forgetfulness. To remember the immense gift God gave the Israelites is to remember that we must never become pyramid-builders, obsessed with our own power, unable to heed the cries and whispers of suffering of the people living in our midst.

Eva Illouz, Sociology Anthropology, Hebrew University Jerusalem


haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story