The heart of the Passover Seder is the Maggid, meaning storytelling. Maggid comes from the same root as Haggadah, which means telling. The Maggid tells the story of the Jewish people’s exodus from slavery in Egypt. During the Maggid, we say the words, “ (Arami oved avi).” This phrase is sometimes translated as “My father was a wandering Aramean” and other times as “An Aramean sought to destroy my father.” Somewhere between the two translations lies the essence of the Jewish experience: a rootless people who have fled persecution time and time again.

This has special resonance today since "Aramea" is the area now known as Syria. Most of us find ourselves, in the midst of the worst refugee crisis in many decades, torn between these two interpretations: Between “my own ancestor was a Syrian refugee,” and “a Syrian is trying to kill my father.” That struggle is as old as Deuteronomy. That is why our Jewish community finds ourselves in conflict. What do we do with that which scares us and at the same time tugs at our very souls? People are suffering, people are running, people are getting into rubber rafts with their children to cross the Mediterranean—that is how desperate they are. And we know exactly how they feel—because we have been there so many times. And we know too, that they come from an area of the world where they may well have been raised to hate us and our own homeland. So what do we do—as a community, as a country, as fellow creatures of God?

As we recite the words ‘Arami oved avi,’ we acknowledge that we have stood in the shoes of the refugee. Today, as we celebrate our freedom, we commit ourselves to continuing to stand with contemporary refugees. As members of Temple Har Zion we can be proud of the $50,000 raised in collaboration with the Imam Mahdi Islamic Centre to rescue at least one family of refugees. In honor of this commitment, we place a pair of shoes on our doorstep of this home to acknowledge that none of us is free until all of us are free and to pledge to stand in support of welcoming those who do not yet have a place to call home.


haggadah Section: Maggid - Beginning