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This is the Bread of Oppression
Contributed by Cara Kupferman

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

What transforms the bread of oppression into the bread of freedom is the willingness to share it with others.

Primo Levi survived Auschwitz. In his book,  If This Is a Man, he describes his experiences there. According to Levi, the worst time of all was when the Nazis left in January 1945, fearing the Russian advance. For ten days, they were left alone with only scraps of food and fuel. He writes:

When the broken window was repaired and the stove began to spread its heat, something seemed to relax in everyone, and at that moment Towarowski (a Franco-Pole of 23, typhus) proposed to the others that each of them offer a slice of bread to us three who had been working [to repair the window]. And so it was agreed.

Only a day before, a similar event would have been inconceivable. The law of the Lager [concentration camps] said: "eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbor," and left no room for gratitude. It really meant that the law of the Lager was dead.

It was the first human gesture that occured among us. I believe that that moment can be dated as the beginning of the change by which we who had not died slowly changed from Haftlinge [prisoners] to men again.

Sharing food is the first act through which slaves become free human beings. One who fears tomorrow does not offer his bread to others. But one who is willing to divide his food with a stranger has already shown himself capable of fellowship and faith, the two things from which hope is born. That is why we begin the seder by inviting others to join us. Bread shared is no longer the bread of oppression. Reaching out to others, giving help to the needy and companionship to those who are alone, we bring freedom into the world, and with freedom, God.
haggadah Section: Maggid - Beginning
Source: Koren Haggadah p. 25

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