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The Telling of the Passover Story
Contributed by Kayla Shore

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

Memory is not a static deposit; it is neither rules nor happenings that confront us unchanging. As members of living communities, Jews continually re-remember; we retell and recast the Jewish past in light of changing communal experience and changing communal values. Memory is formed and reformed from the interaction of every generation with the fluid richness of Torah.

As Jews, we are commanded to remember and retell. The act of memory recreates us. Now is the time, in our celebration of Passover, when we suspend the flow of time and relive the exodus of our ancestors in the retelling. 

There was a time when our people were enslaved by a Pharaoh in Egypt.

In fear of rebellion, Pharaoh decreed that all Hebrew boy-children be killed. Through the courage of midwives, a boy named Moses survived. 

Fearing for his safety (and their own), his family placed him in a basket and he floated down the Nile. 

He was found, and adopted, by Pharaoh's daughter. Thus he survived.

When he had grown to maturity, the Eternal spoke to Moses, telling him that he was to lead the Hebrew people to freedom. Despite Moses' protests, the Eternal persisted, and Moses went to Pharaoh to plead the injustice of slavery. He gave Pharaoh a mandate which resounds through history: Let my people go.

Pharaoh refused, and Moses warned him that the Eternal, the All--Mighty, would strike the Egyptian people. These threats were not idle: ten terrible plagues were unleashed, one after another, upon the Egyptians. At last Pharaoh agreed to our liberation. Fearful that he would change his mind, our people fled, not waiting for their bread dough to rise. (For this reason we eat unleavened bread as we take part in their  exodus.)

Pharaoh's army soon followed us to the sea. Moses, strong in his faith, entered the waters. The Eternal parted the sea, and our people passed through unharmed. We mourn, even now, that Pharaoh's army drowned: our liberation is bittersweet because of those who died in our pursuit.

To this day we relive our liberation, that we may not become complacent, that we may always rejoice in our freedom. 

Passover provides a time to remember the Jewish people's Exodus from Egypt, but too often that story is only half-told.

How do we recover the parts of Jewish women's history that are forgotten, and how do we then ensure that they will be  remembered --incorporated into our sense of communal identity?
haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story
Source: The Williams College Feminist Haggadah, 1996

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