An Incomplete Transition From Slavery to Freedom

Reflections on the Haggadah from this year's Seders

It’s been longer than usual since I posted here, and I apologize sincerely to my readers for that. As I’ve mentioned a number of times before, I’m in the process of making my first feature film (the first that I will be directing, anyway), and there was a crush of work to do regarding casting over the past couple of weeks. Couple that with Passover prep, which is practically a full-time job in and of itself, and I’ve had no time to write anything.

I should have a piece out some time this week about China and Taiwan, which I hope will irritate everyone on all sides of that question. But today, I wanted to share something that came out at the Seder, and that I’ve been turning over in my head since.

There’s a famous passage in the Haggadah, right at the end of the storytelling (“magid”) portion of the Seder, that reads as follows:

בְּכָל־דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת־עַצְמוֹ כְּאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרַיִם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וְהִגַּדְתָּ לְבִנְךָ בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא לֵאמֹר, בַּעֲבוּר זֶה עָשָׂה ה' לִי בְּצֵאתִי מִמִּצְרַיִם. לֹא אֶת־אֲבוֹתֵינוּ בִּלְבָד גָּאַל הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא, אֶלָּא אַף אוֹתָנוּ גָּאַל עִמָּהֶם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וְאוֹתָנוּ הוֹצִיא מִשָּׁם, לְמַעַן הָבִיא אוֹתָנוּ, לָתֶת לָנוּ אֶת־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר נִשָׁבַּע לַאֲבֹתֵינוּ

In each and every generation, a person is obligated to see himself as if he left Egypt, as it is stated (Exodus 13:8); "And you shall explain to your son on that day: For the sake of this, did the Lord do [this] for me in my going out of Egypt." Not only our ancestors did the Holy One, blessed be He, redeem, but rather also us [together] with them did He redeem, as it is stated (Deuteronomy 6:23); "And He took us out from there, in order to bring us in, to give us the land which He swore unto our fathers."

Why are we sitting around telling this story on Passover eve? Because there is a commandment in the Torah, cited above, to tell your children what God did on that very night years and years ago. But that commandment, even though it is clearly intended to be passed down through the generations, is formulated in the first person singular: This is because of what God did for me, not for my ancestors or for our people collectively, but for me. The implication, the Haggadah implies, is that you yourself were liberated from Egypt, and that you should see and present yourself that way. This isn’t historical; it’s personal. The further implication is that the telling—this activity we’re engaged in at the Seder—is itself an enactment of that self-understanding. By telling the story in the first person, we not only pass on a mythic memory to our children; we incorporate it into our own personal memory. By saying we were there, we remember that we were there, and therefore we were there. We were all slaves; now we are all free.

Well and good. But the second verse cited in the paragraph quoted above goes further. The passage from Deuteronomy is apropos because it comes from another commandment related to telling your children a story; Deuteronomy 6:20 says that “When thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying: 'What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the ordinances, which the Lord our God hath commanded you?” you are supposed to answer by telling the story of the Exodus (in the first person plural, I note, which makes the matter less explicitly personal and more plausibly a matter of national memory), concluding with the ultimate purpose of the Exodus: To bring the Israelites to the land of Canaan which they had been promised. (As an aside: the question in Deuteronomy 6:20 is also the question that the “wise” son asks in the Four Sons section of the Haggadah, where it receives a very different answer; as well, Exodus 13:8 contains the reply given to both the “wicked” son and the son “who does not know how to ask”—all of which is to say: the same verse can be cited to very different purposes at different points in the Haggadah.)

This is interesting, because the part of the Haggadah that actually tells the story is quoting (and commenting upon) another chunk of Deuteronomy, from chapter 26, another text that commanded recitation. This is a text from the ritual of the bikkurim, the offering of the first fruits, and it reads as follows:

ה  וְעָנִיתָ וְאָמַרְתָּ לִפְנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, אֲרַמִּי אֹבֵד אָבִי, וַיֵּרֶד מִצְרַיְמָה, וַיָּגָר שָׁם בִּמְתֵי מְעָט; וַיְהִי-שָׁם, לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל עָצוּם וָרָב. ו  וַיָּרֵעוּ אֹתָנוּ הַמִּצְרִים, וַיְעַנּוּנוּ; וַיִּתְּנוּ עָלֵינוּ, עֲבֹדָה קָשָׁה. ז  וַנִּצְעַק, אֶל-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵי אֲבֹתֵינוּ; וַיִּשְׁמַע יְהוָה אֶת-קֹלֵנוּ, וַיַּרְא אֶת-עָנְיֵנוּ וְאֶת-עֲמָלֵנוּ וְאֶת-לַחֲצֵנוּ. ח  וַיּוֹצִאֵנוּ יְהוָה, מִמִּצְרַיִם, בְּיָד חֲזָקָה וּבִזְרֹעַ נְטוּיָה, וּבְמֹרָא גָּדֹל--וּבְאֹתוֹת, וּבְמֹפְתִים. ט  וַיְבִאֵנוּ, אֶל-הַמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה; וַיִּתֶּן-לָנוּ אֶת-הָאָרֶץ הַזֹּאת, אֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ. י  וְעַתָּה, הִנֵּה הֵבֵאתִי אֶת-רֵאשִׁית פְּרִי הָאֲדָמָה, אֲשֶׁר-נָתַתָּה לִּי, יְהוָה; וְהִנַּחְתּוֹ, לִפְנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, וְהִשְׁתַּחֲוִיתָ, לִפְנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ

5 And thou shalt speak and say before the Lord thy God: 'A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there, few in number; and he became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous. 6 And the Egyptians dealt ill with us, and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage. 7 And we cried unto the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice, and saw our affliction, and our toil, and our oppression. 8 And the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs, and with wonders. 9 And He hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10 And now, behold, I have brought the first of the fruit of the land, which Thou, O Lord, hast given me.' And thou shalt set it down before the Lord thy God, and worship before the Lord thy God.

Again, we have a command to speak, and by speaking to remember and to incorporate the collective memory into the personal (God heard our voice, not their voice, our ancestors’ voice), so again, it makes sense that the Haggadah, “the telling,” would choose to place this text whose recitation was commanded at the heart of its own telling of the story. But here’s what’s interesting: the Haggadah truncates the text, ending at the end of verse 8. There’s no mention of being brought into the land, in verse 9, which is the completion of the story—precisely the same event being referenced in Deuteronomy 6:23.

I’ve always found that omission significant, and I’ve usually understood it to be connected with the incomplete state of general redemption. The earliest version of the Haggadah wasn’t composed in exile, but it was certainly composed after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the end of Jewish sovereignty. So it makes sense that the Haggadah looks forward to another redemption but avoids, at least in the heart of its telling of the story, describing that redemption as having been accomplished. (Even Deuteronomy 6:23 says we were taken out of Egypt in order to bring us into the land, which is not quite the same as saying that we have been brought into the land.) This is also background context to the debate about whether we drink four or five cups of wine. The four cups correspond to God’s four promises articulated in Exodus 6:6-7: I will bring you out; I will deliver you; I will redeem you; and I will take you as a people. There’s a fifth promise, though, in Exodus 6:8: I will bring you in (to the promised land), and the debate about whether or not to drink that cup was deferred for the prophet Elijah to resolve in the messianic age, which is the origin of the cup of Elijah on the table at the Seder.

But this year, it occurred to me that this incompleteness isn’t only national and collective. It’s also personal, and it makes sense to make it personal in the same manner as we’re supposed to make personal the experience of the Exodus, because it is part of the personal experience of the Exodus. If you recall, the generation that actually went out from Egypt (according to the biblical story; I’m not getting into the debate about the historicity of the Exodus here) did not complete the transition from slavery to freedom. That generation was given the opportunity to complete the transition, to enter the land of Canaan—but they flinched. Ten of the twelve spies sent to investigate the land reported back that the country was unconquerable, and so the people refused to enter. As a consequence, the entire Exodus generation was condemned to die in the desert. Only Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who were undaunted, were allowed to enter.

So if we are to consider ourselves as having been personally brought out of Egypt, then we should go all the way. The omission of the last line of the bikkurim text doesn’t just have to be a comment on the state of the world, a recognition that the messiah hasn’t come yet. It can also be a comment on ourselves and the state we are in as we see ourselves coming out of Egypt. Considering ourselves as having personally come out of slavery implies that we are in the same position as that generation—subject to the same possibility of flinching and failing, and therefore to the same risk of dying in the desert.

From that perspective, the annual repetition of the ritual telling at the Seder isn’t just about remembering or reenacting something accomplished in the past and making it our own. It’s an attempt at a takanah, a correction or repair of something that went wrong in the past. By telling it again, and thereby going through it again, we open up the possibility that this time we’ll get it right. And if we don’t, there’s always next year—in Jerusalem (metaphorically speaking).

Chag kasher v’sameach.