Timeless are the texts that resonate with readers generation after generation, the texts that seem so contemporary even though written centuries ago.
The Passover Haggadah is such a text.
For millennia, Jews have gathered around the Seder table and read this ancient text, recounting the Exodus from Egypt. Each generation has found something in it that speaks to its particular moment.
This is as true this year as ever, in the aftermath of the horrors of October 7 and in the midst of war with those who seek our destruction.
The emotions that will be felt at Seders this year will be profound.
Some Seders will be hosted by families who lost loved ones on October 7 or in subsequent battles with Hamas in Gaza or with Hezbollah on the northern border. Another set of Seders will be those of the families with loved ones still held hostage by Hamas.
Those Seders will inevitably be filled with grief, sadness, and an aching longing for those absent from their usual seats, for their missing laughter, banter, and argumentation; for their simply not being there.
Another set of Seders will be held by the families of soldiers and reservists. They, too, this Passover will feel differently and feel the national pain and sorrow that have gripped the country since October 7. But they will also feel a deep, deep sense of gratitude that the family has made it safely to the Seder this year, not a given or anything to be taken for granted.
Their gratitude, however, will be tempered by a national sense of mourning over those not so lucky.
The final set of Seders will be hosted by everyone else. They, too, will experience a Seder of wildly mixed emotions at both a personal and national level.
All will sit and retell that moment in history when God took the Jewish people out of Egypt and formed it into a nation. Despite the varied circumstances stemming from October 7, each family will retell this story, recount this historical memory, and feel the gossamer threads that bind the nation together.
It is what makes this people unique. The common historical memory is what binds, and a deep feeling of being bound to the nation – a profound sense of belonging to this people – comes from sitting around and retelling the tale of its birth as a nation.
THEN THERE is the text itself.
Who among us will speak of the bitter herbs, of the salt water representing tears, of a cruel Pharaoh, of the phrase “Let My people go,” of the 10 Plagues, of the slaying of the firstborn, of deliverance and redemption, of “Next year in Jerusalem,” without thinking of contemporary events and what has befallen this nation since Simchat Torah.
Who among us will come to the passage “V’hi she’amda la’avotenu” and not sing or recite it with great feeling?
“This [promise] is what has stood by our ancestors and us,” the Seder participants will sing loudly. “For not just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand!”
A timeless text is one you read and think, as you read it: We’re going through this; this is now.
From Pharaoh and Haman to Sinwar and Khamenei: Plotting to destroy the Jews
Undoubtedly, millions will sing that verse this year with intense emotion, closed eyes, clenched fists, and the thought going through their minds that we are just reliving a scene played out time after time. It’s the same idea to destroy the Jews – only the actors on the stage have changed.
Someone will read this text somewhere and say, “Once it was Pharaoh, then Haman, then Torquemada, then Chmielnicki, then Hitler, now Sinwar and Khamenei.” Someone argumentative around that table will ask how one can compare Sinwar to Hitler, to which he who made the comparison will reply: “The intent is the same, only the capabilities are different.”
Some will read or sing that verse and be depressed by the thought that this is the fate of the Jewish people – that in every generation, someone will, indeed, rise up to destroy us. Others will focus on and take solace in the last part, that we will be saved from their hands.
That thought that we will face troubles – terrible troubles – but in the end will prevail is a powerful idea that has sustained the Jewish people throughout more difficult days than these. And it will sustain us during these trying times as well.
There are those on the outside looking at Israel’s current situation – the hot war in Gaza, the war of attrition with Hezbollah in the north, the terrorist war in Judea and Samaria, the frontal confrontation with Iran – and wonder how, and if, Israel will survive.
But Jews sitting around the Seder table laden with the bread of affliction and the Cup of Elijah will think to themselves, yes we will.
They will think: This is the promise. We have been here before, survived, and flourished, and we will do so again. It says so in this timeless text right here, a text Jews have been saying every year for centuries and whose optimism, as if by osmosis, they have internalized. Yes, they will rise up against us generation after generation. We have seen that in the past; we are living it today. But in the end, we will prevail. That, too, we have seen in the past and are living today.
Or, as a more contemporary source – Meir Ariel – wrote in an iconic 1990 song, “We survived Pharaoh, we’ll survive this as well.”
“Today we are slaves,” the Haggadah opens on a down note, but then quickly contrasts it by saying, “next year we shall be free; now we are here, next year in the land of Israel.”
That, too, has been internalized by the Jewish people. An eternal hope and belief that things will get better; that Jewish history has an upward trajectory; and that next year we will be in a rebuilt, peaceful Jerusalem.