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I want to start off by talking about Mah Nishtanah, the four questions the youngest child asks at the seder table. The four questions are:
Why is this night different from all other nights?
On all other nights we eat leavened products and matzah, and on this night only matzah.
On all other nights we eat all vegetables, and on this night only bitter herbs.
On all other nights, we don't dip our food even once, and on this night we dip twice.
On all other nights we eat sitting or reclining, and on this night we only recline.
Link to the Hebrew and translation can be found using this link.
The Social Justice Hagadah, a progressive modern day Hagadah to use at the seder table (highly recommended) asks a fifth question: “In some ways, why is this night NO different from other nights” because on this night literally billions of people are still enslaved in one form or another as they are on all the rest of the nights. Slavery today is more hidden, less visible, unlike earlier in U.S history and our experience in Egypt.
Since the youngest child is reading the Mah Nishtanah (traditionally) I think this suggested fifth question is crucial to their understanding of the Pesach story and how it relates to their world today. As a youth movement that holds social justice near and dear to its heart, we should be motivating kids to take the values and morals of their Judaism and expand it to helping and supporting those who are currently oppressed.
Something that I often struggle with at the seder table is the fact that we are talking
about the Israelites and all that they had to go through. We trail through Magid, Maror, Avadim Dayenu, the salt water, the whole shebang that recalls the despair and tragedies Jews faced. Sometimes, more recent struggles of the Jews will be brought up such as the Holocaust, or the anti-Semitism that Jews face in Europe.
I want to challenge each of you this seder to extend the morals and themes inherent in the Pesach story, such as the struggle for freedom and fighting injustice, onto a much larger scale. As the Social Justice Hagadah explains, there is still slavery in our world. Can we really sing Dayenu and exalt in God’s glory that “it would have been enough!” for all he has done for us – when so many are still oppressed and suffering, even if we do not necessarily experience it as middle-class American Jews?
The translation to Dayenu can be found here.
The central purpose of the seder was framed in the Talmud nearly 1800 years ago that, “in every generation each person is obligated to see oneself as if he or she went out from Egypt” (Pesachim 116b). While I think this is important, we often times leave the seder just at that. We were once slaves, now we are free, lets rejoice/eat, right?
Simply celebrating Pesach is not enough, especially based on what I’ve learned throughout my time as a chanicha. If we are truly using the seder as a time to reimagine what our ancestors went through in the land of Egypt, then we should take those lessons and implement them into our daily lives – to assure slavery and oppression in every form cannot exist. It is the youth who have the power to lead the way towards freedom,
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