HA LAḤMA ANYA
As Rabbi Sacks explains in his Haggada, the root of the word “haggada” means not only “to tell” but also “to bind,” and the Seder evening binds us together as a people. Jews from all walks of life and religious backgrounds will find themselves at a Seder table, and should be welcomed. In fact, the biblical command to sacrifice the Pesaḥ lamb had to be done in a Ḥavura, which is more than one family coming together. The Exodus freedom is not just about leaving slavery, but also about journeying to the Promised Land and building a society based on the values of the Torah, where kindness to strangers will be a core value. This starts tonight.
The beauty of matza is that it can represent both. In fact, without slavery we would not appreciate our freedom, so both concepts can exist in this experience at the same time.
Although some families choose to have Seder night on their own (especially if they have young children, so the parents can focus on them) and this is perfectly okay, most people will find themselves at a Seder night with others from outside of their immediate family. People come together for this ritual. But more than this, it is a powerful thought that the entire Jewish people find themselves at a Seder table at the same time, and with some imagination, we can also feel connected to the generations that went before us who celebrated this festival in exactly the same way.
MA NISHTANA
Learning through questions makes the educational process engaging and empowering for the learner.
Any question asked out of a desire for knowledge, without a secondary agenda, is a good question. There are no bad questions in this case.
Not all questions have answers, or at least answers that humans with finite and limited understanding can arrive at. Some questions only the infinite God can answer. But we don’t stop asking the questions. The questions are more important than the answers.
AVADIM HAYINU
As a nation, we have a national memory and identity. So when the Haggada speaks of our experience in Egypt as slaves, while this refers to a specific generation and historical time period, as a nation we have that experience implanted in our national memory and identity. The Haggada encourages us to re-experience this every year on Seder night, and Avadim Hayinu reminds us that the experience does impact us directly, for if God had not redeemed us, we would be slaves ourselves to this day.
A good story told well can have a big impact. Stories can be powerful when they are experiential, in that the listener can imagine that they are living the story, or at least empathise and identify with the characters and their experiences. The longer and more detailed the story is, the better the chances are that this will happen. So the Haggada encourages us to tell the story at length, and deeply engage with it, so we can experience the story as fully as possible.
Because Seder night is not about “learning” or “reading” or “understanding” but rather about experiencing and living the story, the Haggada tells us that even wise and experienced people who have done this many times before still have to retell the story. Each year it is a new experience.
THE FOUR CHILDREN
Obviously all answers are legitimate, but in the ensuing discussion it is worth encouraging everyone to realise that each of us is all of the four children at different times in our lives (or even at different times of the day!).
All children are different and have different educational needs. Insightful parents and teachers realise this and try their hardest to cater to those individual needs.
Children are the main focus of the evening because this night more than any other is when we pass on our national heritage to the next generation. Even though the process of learning about and re-experiencing the Exodus is a task which takes a lifetime, it begins when we are children, laying the foundation of our Jewish identity and allowing the national narrative to become part of our very core. We take our cue from the Torah itself, which focuses on the questions children will ask about the Exodus.
THE TEN PLAGUES
Each plague attacked a different aspect of the physical and spiritual needs of Egyptian society. The Egyptians could probably have managed without one or two or even more of the elements that were attacked, but all ten plagues together was a systematic destruction of their way of life.
Every plague was terrible and designed to attack a different aspect of Egyptian society and cause problems for the Egyptians. If you have to choose one…it doesn’t get more terrible than the final plague.
God could have taken the Israelites out of Egypt without any miracles or drama. But He chose to take the Egyptians on an educational journey, because the process was important. And even more important than the direct impact on the Egyptians was the impact on the world that was watching (or at least hearing reports) and the effect on the Israelites themselves. The plagues were as much for these other groups as they were for Pharaoh and the Egyptians, if not more so.
DAYEINU
Full redemption from Egypt was the establishing of a sovereign nation in the Promised Land, with the Temple at the centre of its religious and political life. If God had stopped short of this at any of the previous stages, then it would not have been complete redemption.
The message behind Dayeinu is that each individual stage was miraculous and magnificent, and worthy of praise and gratitude.
While the physical redemption ended with the liberation from slavery and leaving the geographical boundaries of Egypt, and the spiritual redemption took place at the Giving of the Torah on Sinai, the full religio-social redemption was only achieved once the Jews entered the land of Israel and built a society there based on the Torah.
PESAḤ, MATZA, MAROR
It is experiential. We don’t just talk or learn or read about the story, we experience it through food and other rituals (such as leaning, pouring for each other, etc.) in order to relive the story.
Yes, all the Ḥagim in Judaism do, although to a lesser extent than Pesaḥ. For example, we sit in the sukka, and we stay up all night learning to prepare to receive the Torah on Shavuot.
While some of our educational institutions do practise experiential education (camp is the best example) and some of our schools find opportunities to also do so (such as by having shabbatonim), perhaps institutions of formal Jewish education could find more creative ways to incorporate the methodology of experiential education.
HALLEL
It is hard to know where to start. But it is important to articulate all the things God did for the Israelites and how we benefit from these acts until this day. In the words of the Haggada itself, “And if the Holy One, blessed be He, had not brought our fathers out of Egypt – then we, and our children, and the children of our children, would still be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt.”
If one is comfortable finding words that articulate genuine emotion, then there is room for that in our prayers. But for many this is a challenge, and so we fall back on the exquisite words of our greatest poets and spiritual leaders, to give us the words we need. Our challenge is then to channel our emotions through these words.
For some, words capture the feelings and emotions that we need to express. But for others, only music can connect to our soul to do this sufficiently. While Rabbi Sacks was a masterful wordsmith and orator, he acknowledged that music can take us further along when it comes to expressing what is in our soul.
NIRTZA
They should (and do) because this section refers to a rebuilt Jerusalem in Messianic times, when the Temple will exist (allowing us to celebrate Pesaḥ as originally described in the Torah) in a redeemed world of peace. This has clearly not been achieved yet, and so it is appropriate to pray for this at the end of the Seder night, even while sitting in the beautiful rebuilt modern city of Jerusalem.
The Exodus is the beginning of a journey that we are still on. The destination of this journey is rebuilt Jerusalem in a redeemed world of peace. We hope that this can be achieved in time for next year’s Seder.
All the Ḥagim are special and unique in Israel. There is something very powerful about celebrating a Jewish festival in a Jewish state. It is also easier to remember that we are closer to the final destination of the Jewish journey now than at any point in history, when sitting in the ancient Jewish homeland, rebuilt in modern times.
ḤAD GADYA
The whole of the Seder is focused on children, and on transmitting our heritage to the next generation. Like the other songs at the conclusion of the Seder, this song is fun to sing, and it also contains a strong educational message. This is a great way to end the Seder night journey.
The message of Ḥad Gadya is that while it may seem during our history that there are powerful forces who will dominate and even destroy us, these forces come and go, and only God decides who survives in the long term. And if you consider Jewish history, it is clear that He has decided that the Jewish people have a destiny to fulfil, and therefore we have outlasted all these powerful nations (represented in the song by the animals, etc.) that have tried to destroy us.
Modern Jewish history reflects this same message. In the twentieth century, an enemy of the Jewish people came closer than ever before to wiping them out, yet not only did the Jewish people survive, but in fact just three years later returned to their ancestral homeland, re-established sovereignty there, and are now thriving like never before. We are part of a generation that is living the fulfilment of the message of this song.