The Message of the Haggadah for our Contemporary Times

On Thursday evening, as the U.S. was beginning to hear talk about our bombing of a military airbase in Syria, Charlie and I were helping transport a young Syrian UNL professor and her son to a panel discussion at Doane College in which she and I were participating.  As might be expected, our conversation included pleasantries, talking about one another’s families, educational backgrounds, work, and free time activities.  It also focused on the genocide being committed in Syria, the fear in the hearts of those still living in that war-torn country, and the resulting refugee crisis.

It was obvious when talking to my friend, who is an articulate and beautiful Muslim woman, that the country that she had been raised in, where children once played safely in the streets, where there once was a sense of community and caring among those living in her city, that the world she had known and loved was being destroyed. Now she worries about her parents who don’t have visas to leave; she worries about her children who will never be able to develop a close relationship with those grandparents; and she knows that her dream of bringing an open dialogue between the three Abrahamic religions to the university scene in Damascus, will never come to fruition. She has given up hope of ever re-establishing the life she once knew in the country that is now torn by civil war.

Yet, she is thankful for her new life in a free and democratic country.  She is grateful to be safe, to watch her children being part of society that allows them to learn freely, and to be a part of the modern languages department at UNL.  As I listened to her speak, it reminded me of listening to my immigrant grandparents who left behind loved ones in their motherland to start a new life in freedom.

After we returned that night, I saw that HIAS had produced an Haggadah supplement for use this year. It appropriately ties into the conversations that had been held in our car earlier that evening.

 It begins with the message:

 “As we celebrate the Jewish people’s biblical exodus from Egypt, we remember that there are 60 million displaced people around the world, people fleeing violence and persecution in search of a safe place to call home.”

In the coming week, we will spend two nights talking about our past not only because it is important to know what has made us who we are but also because such knowledge should inform us about how we should behave in the present.  We are currently in -the -midst- of the worst refugee crisis since World War II. As Jews, we need to take the message of the Haggadah to remind ourselves of our responsibility to welcome the stranger, to provide for the needy, to usher in a time in which the reality of redemption will be experienced by all. 

I believe that Arnold Eisen, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary said it best:  the Haggadah implicitly offers basic instruction about being human in the world that transcends differences of politics or policy: Your life matters, it insists. The world matters. Don’t give up on it or on yourself. Don’t accept the verdict of the Roman general who declares defiantly, in a story recounted in the Talmud, that if God cares about the poor, let Him take care of them! (BT Bava Batra 10a). If there are poor people in this world, the general implies, God must want it that way. The Haggadah, by contrast, calls on us to ponder what it means to be enslaved—politically, economically, personally—and what it means to be free, and then demands that we think together at the seder about how to move ourselves, our society, and our world from slavery to freedom.

No matter where you are attending seder this year, take the message of the Haggadah to heart.  Learn that it speaks not only of the past, but of the present and offers us a challenge to make a difference in the lives of those who are now strangers in our midst.