This is the 3200th annual seder, the longest running continuously performed ritual in the history of Humankind. It invokes memories from year to year and from generation to generation. What we do here tonight successfully keeps alive a lesson that makes Passover personal and universal at the same time. "In every generation each of us is commanded to see ourselves as if we went out of Egypt ("Mitsrayim")."

Passover is not a one-time, historical event but an exodus relived year after year, generation after generation, as each of us imagines ourselves going free from Egypt and simultaneously setting ourselves free from the enslavements, personal or communal, of our generation. "Mitsrayim," the Hebrew for Egypt, can also be translated as "from narrow straits," suggesting that at Passover we might think about how to effect an exodus from our own narrow places.


haggadah Section: Maggid - Beginning