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Return to Solomon Haggadah- click on green buttonHaggadah and Liberation1 (see Endnotes)
Why do we celebrate Passover in our day?
Through the ages, our people’s Spring Festival has expanded to express an ever greater understanding of the concept of liberation. The earliest meanings of the holiday relate back to pre-Israelite times and refer to two distinct holidays: the Feast of the Paschal Lamb and the Festival of Matzot, or Feast of Unleavened Bread. Each of these feasts, occurring at the lambing season and the beginning of the wheat and barley harvest, respectively, celebrate the renewal of the year’s growth and, so, a liberation from the fear of economic destruction. In biblical times, both of these holidays gained historical associations and related to the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. During the biblical period the Exodus event became the central idea of Jewish life and the experience from which the core values of our people grew. Prescriptions for social, civil and ritual practices all harkened back to the experience of the liberation because:
“You were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Some of these rules instituted the Sabbath (Deut. 5:12-15), regulated loans (Lev. 25:35-38) and the treatment of servants (Lev. 25:29-43), as well as widows, orphans and the poor (Deut. 16:11, 12), and set the guidelines for sexual morality (Lev. 18:3ff).
Toward the close of the biblical period, individual families celebrated the Passover by bringing their sacrifice to the Temple in Jerusalem, then returning to their homes to cook the meal and eat it with the matzot and bitter herbs. Except that the slaughtering occurred in the Temple, the celebration differed little from what Exodus prescribed. This is still essentially the practice, even today, among the Samaritans who gather each year to observe the Passover on Mount Gerizim. The late biblical period was a time of tremendous spiritual creativity among our people and new interpretations as well as modes of observing the festival developed. We did not discard earlier ideas about the Passover. Rather, we expanded some of them to relate to then contemporary spiritual and political concerns. The Passover Seder and its Haggadah developed to express these ideas.
The biblical text lends itself to this process. The Passover Haggadah uses a variety of terms to describe the transformation of the ancient Hebrews when they left Egypt. After the Exodus, according to the Bible, God simply tells the people (Ex. 11:17) “I brought your ranks out of the land of Egypt.” However, before the Exodus, the Bible relates a more detailed description of what is to happen. There (Ex. 6:6-7), the text uses a series of terms that make their way into the Haggadah and shape how we have understood the Exodus ever since:
“...I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. And I will take you to be my people....”
Each of these terms has an ancient tradition of meaning. Nonetheless, together, they have come to connote words that, in American usage of our day, suggest “liberation.” While “redemption” in a religious context implies a spiritual state, in its ancient biblical context, it referred to an individual act of physically saving someone from danger or bondage. “Deliverance” has also been understood with its more “spiritual” connotation; yet, as is clear from the Exodus passage, it is also a political term. While the word Haggadah means “narrative,” very little of the classic Haggadah is devoted to a simple telling of the Exodus story. Instead the rabbis wove a variety of activities into the Seder event that purportedly serve to highlight the values of the Exodus and enable the participants to “learn by doing.” There have been many textual additions to the Haggadah, as well as commentaries on the meaning of the texts and actions over the ages, still, a basic structure (Seder means “order”) remains.
The Seder and the Haggadah begin with a recitation of the fourteen major segments of the evening’s program:
1. Sanctifying the holiday
2. Washing the hands
3. Eating the green vegetable dipped in salt water
4. Break the middle Matzah
5. Reciting the Narrative
6. Washing the hands (before eating the meal)
7. Blessing for the bread and the Matzah
8. Eating the bitter herb
9. Eating the Matzah with the bitter herb
10. Eating the meal
11. Finding the Afikoman
12. Reciting the grace after meals
13. Singing the Psalms of praise
14. Concluding with the hope that we reenacted the Exodus with the appropriate intention.
Begin the Seder
Candle Lighting
As the evening shadows lengthen, we prepare to light the holiday candles. In this act we unite and identify ourselves in time and space with all Jews in other periods and places of our history. Many people throughout the world mark significant events with fire. Jews also associate lighting fires with special occasions. Like other people who regarded fire as a gift to be used wisely and with respect, we focus our attention on the Source of the lights we use in our ceremonies. And so we repeat the ancient blessing:
Barukh atah Adonai eloheinu melekh ha-olam, asher kid’shanu be-
mitzvotav ve-tzivanu le-hadlik ner shel [Shabbat ve-shel] yom tov.
Praised art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe who hast sanctified us with Thy Commandments, and commanded us to kindle [the Sabbath and]
the festival lights.
(Light the candles)