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Framing the Retelling of the Exodus
Contributed by Shoshana Rice

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

Summarized Excerpt from Rahel Musleah's Revolutionary Ideas to Explore at Your Seder

The Seder doesn’t just recall a one-time historical event, says Rabbi Jacobs. “The past is not something with a beginning and an end. In Judaism, the past imposes obligations for the present.” She contrasts the way she was educated about the Revolutionary War. “Growing up in Boston, I’d hear about the brave heroes of the American Revolution, but no one said, ‘Because you come from that tradition, you have a responsibility to be revolutionary.’ The idea that we as Jews are asked to feel as if we personally experienced the event of leaving Egypt is spread throughout Judaism. We recall it daily in our liturgy, and it’s the reason for many of our mitzvot. We're called to personally and constantly be internalizing the story's themes and insights.

The concept of the Passover Seder was developed by the rabbis of the Mishnah by the second century, but the first written Haggadah did not appear until the ninth century. The rabbis’ purpose was to get children to ask questions that would then elicit the story of the Exodus, retold as a dramatic first-person re-enactment according to each child’s ability to comprehend, with edible symbols as props in a multisensory experience incorporating eating, seeing, doing, acting and feeling. The Haggadah only offers bits of the story and sample questions; it assumes further unscripted dialogue will ensue personalizing and making each theme relevant.

According to Rabbi Ayelet Cohen, the most revolutionary aspect of the Haggadah is that it’s a collage of many different voices, a collection of stories from the Talmud and a compilation of biblical and liturgical quotations. The most common misunderstanding is that it’s just the story of the Exodus. One of the most damaging misconceptions in Jewish life is that there is one story, and that the stories of women’s experiences and those of others who are marginalized because of economics, physical ability, age, sexual orientation, or gender identity aren't relevant or necessary. The Haggadah teaches that there isn’t just one story, and our central obligation is to recognize the limitless applications for versions of the same story throughout our world and personal lives.

The Haggadah is about telling a story that’s literally revolutionary, that will help us figure out how to be more free.

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Adapted excerpt from: The Exodus: A Personal Coming Out, In Every Generation by Rabbi David Ingber

In our tradition leaving Egypt wasn’t an historical event alone. In our tradition, it was a personal and existential leaving as well.

"בְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת עַצְמוֹ\עַצְמָהּ כְאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא\ה מִמִּצְרַיִם”

(In every generation a person must regard themselves as though they personally had gone out of Egypt)

Whenever we leave a narrow place, a place of constriction, painful servitude, a place where we are not authentically who we are, that leap taking, that transitioning, is an exodus. A freedom walk.

The tradition teaches us that rejecting something oppressive is not only acceptable, but it is something to admire, to strive for. We have an obligation in every generation to reflect on what holds us back and free ourselves.

What has been/is your personal Mitzrayim?

In what was have you been liberated throughout your life? Recently?
haggadah Section: Introduction
Source: Shoshana's JLF Class

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