April 12 at night (which happens to be right before Palm Sunday this year), Jews will observe the Passover holiday with a ritual ceremonial meal called the “Seder.” The Passover Seder menu, such as the original biblical Passover, includes unleavened bread called “matzah” and bitter herbs called “maror.” The prayer book for conducting the Seder is called the “Haggadah.” The Haggadah explains that the matzah is to remind us that the departure from Egypt was in a hurry, and therefore the dough did not have time to rise. The maror is to remind us of the bitterness of the Egyptian bondage. The Seder rigamarole is to make Passover more than a lesson, but a personal experience. In addition to the required matzah and symbolic bitterness of the bitter herbs, there are four cups of wine to symbolize joy and toast each of the four phases of Divine Deliverance expressed in the Book of Exodus. The symbolic Seder-menu combines the bitterness of slavery and the sweetness of liberation. I heard a Hebrew School teacher, who happened to be a holocaust survivor, tell the children, “When you feel very thankful, you feel very happy.”
There’s a section in the Haggadah that reads:
“In every generation, each person must see himself as though he personally exited Egypt, as it says (Exodus 13:8), ‘And you shall tell your son on that day, saying that it is because of this that the L-rd did for ME when I departed Egypt”
The Seder is a reenactment to personally experience the exodus from Egypt. The Haggadah storytelling is not escape literature like “In a galaxy far, far away”. On the contrary, it brings one down to earth to face imminent situations. Exodus 23:9 reads, “ And do not oppress a stranger; for you know the feelings of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Everyone has felt like an outsider at some time. Verse nine speaks not just to those emancipated Israelites who survived the Egyptian bondage. It speaks to all Jews and has a message for all humanity.
I heard a speaker at a Memorial Day gathering at Swampscott Cemetery say, “We don’t need to be continually taught as much as we need to be continually reminded.”
Hersh Goldman is a Swampscott resident.
