The theme of the seder is liberation, which in the telling of the Exodus story speaks about the liberation of the Jewish people from bondage in Egypt. However, the theme of liberation relates to more than the liberation of the Jewish people from bondage in Egypt, it also relates to the liberation of African-American from the bondage of slavery in the South when President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and to the liberation of African-Americans from the crippling effects of segregation and Jim Crow laws in the South and other parts of the nation after ordinary people such as Rosa Parks, who refuses to give up her seat on a bus, and those courage men and women who marched across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama forced this nation to confront the scourge of racism that made a mockery ofour deeply held belief that "all men are created equal". The theme of liberation and deliverance from bondage resonates throughout our combined history and tasks us today to seek ways to promote a society in which, in the words of JohnF. Kennedy, "the strongare just, the weak secure, and the peace preserved forever."


haggadah Section: Introduction
Source: Richard A. Lewis