Pesach (Passover) | Passover haggadah by Dani Duke

Search Library

Tonight

Passover is Judaism’s most widely celebrated holiday and it's most dramatic blockbuster. Infanticide! Blood rivers! An 11th hour parting of a sea! And the Passover seder is Judaism’s ultimate experience of radical storytelling, playing wildly with form and encouraging us to lose ourselves in the story as we pour wine with a joyfully heavy hand.

By reenacting the Israelites’ dramatic escape to freedom in an elaborate dinner ritual, Passover makes sure we engage all five of our senses. Why? Because on Passover, we’re meant to remember that we left Egypt personally.

We will use this Haggadah (“telling”), to not just retell an ancient story. We are commanded to tell the story as if we ourselves had experienced the transformation from slavery to freedom. We are asked to viscerally engage and acknowledge the bitterness of oppression and the sweetness of freedom so we may better understand the hope and courage of all people, of all generations, in their quest for liberty, security, and human rights.

How do we do this?

One way is to look to the past and imagine ourselves as participants in the story of the Exodus: by tasting the bitter herbs, we taste the bitterness of hard labor and servitude. By eating the matzah, we eat the bread of affliction and poverty, which also was the bread of the Israelites' flight to freedom. By reciting Dayenu (“enough”), we sing of our joy at the many gifts the universe provided along the way.

Another way to experience the transformation from slavery to freedom, is to look to the present : in what ways are we enslaved today? How can we create freedom and justice in the present? We can think of too many situations that call for more freedom and justice in today's world.

In addition, what if we used the seder not only to feel as if we personally were present in the Exodus from Egypt, but also to experience ourselves in the future our grandchildren will live in, with all of the issues we are neglecting to work on now? Right now, in this generation, let us look upon ourselves as sitting side-by-side with those who’ll gather around our families’ seder tables in two or three generations.

“This year we are slaves”

“This year we are slaves” is a common phrase seen in many Haggadahs, speaking to the commandment to tell the story of Passover as if we ourselves were freed from slavery in Egypt.

What do these words mean? We are slaves because yesterday our people were in slavery and memory makes yesterday real for us. But we are also slaves because today there are still people in chains around the world and no one can be truly free while others are in chains. And we are slaves because freedom means more than broken chains. Where there is white supremacy, racism, and xenophobia, there is no freedom. Where there is homophobia and transphobia, there is no freedom. Where there is poverty and hunger and homelessness, there is no freedom; where there is violence and trauma and war, there is no freedom. And where each of us is less than who we might be, we are not free, not yet.

haggadah Section: Introduction