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The Passover Story
Contributed by Lisa Gitelson

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

Leader: Let us retell our story now as we have learned it from biblical history.

Reader:  We lived in Egypt and the Pharaoh was gracious to us.

Reader:  But after some years a new Pharaoh arose who bound us into slavery and laid hard labor on us.

Reader:  The Pharaoh was afraid that we might multiply and rise up against him so he ordered that every newborn son of ours be cast into the Nile.

Reader:  One such child was hidden by his mother in a basket concealed in the bulrushes of the Nile.  He was found by an Egyptian prince who adopted him and named him Moses and raised him in the royal palace.

Reader:  One day when Moses was a grown man he saw an Egyptian beating a slave.  He set upon the Egyptian and killed him.  He then fled into the wilderness where he lived the life of a shepherd.

Reader:  And one day, he saw a bush that was burning but was not consumed by its own fire and he heard a voice that commanded him:  “Go down Moses, to Egypt to those who suffer,” said the voice.

Reader:  Tell them you will deliver them from their oppressors.  You will transform them from slaves into free men and you will lead them away from Egypt to a new land.

Go Down Moses

                                          When Israel was in Egypt land

Let my people go

Oppressed so hard they could not stand

Let my people go

Go down Moses, way down in Egypt land

Tell old Pharaoh, let my people go

When Moses took them from their toil

Let my people go.

He led them all to freedom’s soil

Let my people go

Go down Moses

Way down in Egypt land

Tell old Pharaoh

To let my people go.

Reader:  Moses went to the Pharaoh, but the Pharaoh refused to part with his slaves.  And because of that it is said the Egyptians suffered ten plagues.

Reader:  Their water was polluted, their land was overrun with frogs and wild beasts and vermin and insects, their grain was eaten by locusts, their bodies were infected with boils.  A storm of hailstones feel upon them and darkness was upon the land both night and day.

Reader:   The people of Egypt became fearful, but the Pharaoh would not release the slaves until the last plague, the death of the first born son in every Egyptian household.  This he could not endure and he told Moses to take the slaves out of Egypt.

Reader:  For forty years we wandered in the desert before coming to the land that had been promised.  More than five thousand years have elapsed since then.

Reader:  Years of feasting, years of famine, years of peace and years of war, years of freedom, years of oppression

Reader:  We have wandered over the face of the earth and everywhere we go we bring our love of freedom and the Ten Commandments.
haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story

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