It isn’t Passover right now, but sev­er­al peo­ple recent­ly com­ment­ed that this is one of our bet­ter posts from the old blog, so enjoy.

On all oth­er nights, we may eat either leav­ened or unleav­ened bread; on this night, only unleav­ened bread.

On all oth­er nights, we may eat any veg­etable; on this night we are required to eat bit­ter herbs.

On all oth­er nights, we are not bid­den to dip our veg­eta­bles even once; on this night we dip them twice.

On all oth­er nights, we eat our meal in any man­ner; on this night we sit around the table in a cer­e­mo­ni­al fashion.

The unleav­ened bread is the bread of our afflic­tion, which our ances­tors ate in the land of Egypt. We break a piece and say “All who are hun­gry — let them come and eat. All who are needy — let them come and cel­e­brate the Passover with us. Now we are here; next year may we be in the Land of Israel. Now we are slaves; next year may we be free.”

We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord our God brought us forth from there with a strong hand and an out­stretched arm. If the Holy One, blessed be he, had not brought forth our ances­tors from Egypt, the we and our chil­dren, and our chil­dren’s chil­dren, would still be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. There­fore, even if we are all learned and wise, all elders and ful­ly versed in the Torah, it is our duty nonethe­less to retell the sto­ry of the Exo­dus from Egypt. And the more one dwells on the Exo­dus from Egypt, the more is one to be praised.

So begins the Hag­gadah (my copy is from Rab­bi Nathan Gold­berg). So begins the cel­e­bra­tion of free­dom, and a reminder of the suf­fer­ing our peo­ple have faced over the cen­turies. For thou­sands of years, Jews have bro­ken unleav­ened bread to remem­ber a hasty flight from slav­ery and a promise of greater free­dom to come.

“This is the promise that has sus­tained our ances­tors and us. For it was not one ene­my alone who rose up against us to destroy us; in every gen­er­a­tion there are those who rose up against us to destroy us. But the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hands.”

Is Passover dimin­ished by the lack of evi­dence for the exo­dus itself? I think not. I think a cel­e­bra­tion of free­dom and thanks­giv­ing is of val­ue for itself. That mem­o­ry sus­tained my ances­tors through pogroms after pogroms, through var­i­ous occu­pa­tions of Israel before that. Slaves and abo­li­tion­ists in Amer­i­ca turned to the tale of Moses in their dark­est hour, and a great nation emerged from their dreams and their Passover prayers for freedom.

“Next year in Israel” isn’t a slo­gan for Zion­ism. Israel, like the Exo­dus, is a state of mind. It’s the promise of some­thing bet­ter to come. It won’t come eas­i­ly or soon, but it will come.