BY RABBI ELLEN BERNHARDT, Jewish Community Relations Committee Director and Community Chaplain
The Jewish calendar is especially full this time of year. As I write, we are preparing for Purim; soon after, we’ll brush away the last crumbs of our hamantaschen and turn to the sacred and demanding work of getting ready for Pesach. We clean, we cook, and we prepare ourselves—physically and spiritually—for the seders and the week of Passover that follows.
Certain lines from the Haggadah echo across generations:
- “Let all who are hungry, come and eat.”
- “We were slaves in Egypt and now we are free.”
- “In every generation, each person must see themselves as if they personally went out from Egypt.”
These verses, familiar to Jews around the world, form the heart of the Seder. Alongside them are the symbols we handle and taste: the Ten Plagues, the matzah—the bread of affliction—the bitter herbs, salt water, charoset, shank bone, parsley, and more. Each one is a tactile reminder of the Exodus story, meant to stay alive in our collective memory.
Why do we return, year after year, to this story of suffering and liberation? The Seder certainly contains joy—songs like Dayeinu which even our youngest children know by heart, the frog song, the search for the afikoman, and the playful chaos of Had Gadya. These moments keep children engaged and help root them in Jewish memory. But the deeper purpose of the Seder is to shape our moral consciousness.
The Exodus is the defining event of Jewish history. It marks not only our liberation from slavery but also the moment that leads to receiving the Torah at Sinai and becoming a People. We recall it constantly—zacher yitziat Mitzrayim—including every Shabbat as we recite Kiddush.
But memory alone is not enough. The Seder calls us to cultivate moral responsibility and communal identity. We were slaves; we know the taste of oppression. Our gratitude for freedom must move us to notice and respond to the suffering of others. Some rabbis teach that we continue to battle the “slavery within”—the narrowness of spirit hinted at in the Hebrew word Mitzrayim, meaning “narrow places.” The Seder invites us to confront those constricted places within ourselves and to expand our moral character.
Matzah, the central symbol of this complex and joyous holiday, is both simple and profound. It recalls the haste of our ancestors’ escape, but it also reminds us of affliction. Because we once ate the bread of affliction, we are obligated to be sensitive to the afflictions of others.
“Let all who are hungry come and eat.” Near the end of the Seder, we open the door—symbolically welcoming the stranger and the hungry, and ushering in Elijah, the herald of a future redeemed world. The Seder teaches us never to forget the stranger, for we were strangers in the land of Egypt. And it urges us never to stop working toward a world of justice and peace.
