From this passage we learn that a people can sustain decades, even centuries, of oppression and humiliation. Yet despite all the hardship, such a people can flourish in many ways including increasing in number. And it can flourish in spirit, maintaining hope and conviction that its days of alienation from freedom — personal and national — are numbered.

As Jews, we remember that we became collectively alienated from our land by leaving it and became aliens in another land. So, too, can a people become alien in its own land, as when they are deprived of their freedom and basic human rights.

And, most importantly, just as we were strangers in a strange land, God forbid that we should make others strangers in their own land.

– Steven M. Cohen


haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story
Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwagF937A_8SLVZRQl91RHl5eGc/view