13 Nisan 5778/29th March 2018

It’s cleaning day, and if I write at too much length everyone will think I’m shirking. But I want to set down some thoughts about the Haggadah, which simply means ‘telling’, the telling of the story.

Whose story is it we tell?

First of all, it’s the story of our own people. Avadim hayinnu – ‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt’: the narrative of our ancestors’ redemption from generations of slavery lies at the core not just of our history but of the entire Jewish ethical tradition. From hopelessness to hope, from indignity to dignity, from injustice to justice, from cruelty to compassion, from servitude to freedom – this is the journey we think of when we refer to the Exodus from Egypt not only at Passover, but every Shabbat when we make Kiddush, and every day, morning and evening in our prayers. It is for this journey that we thank God and strive to do God’s will. For the memory of the redemption from Egypt is not intended merely as the recollection of our collective past, but as the constant impetus towards a tomorrow when the dream of freedom and justice for us and for all nations will be realised.

The Haggadah is our particular, personal family story. I was asked only yesterday whether writing my book My Dear Ones: One Family and the Final Solution had ‘brought me closure’ regarding my father’s past. ‘The opposite’, I said. (I’m anyway suspicious of the word ‘closure’. Life does not hold closure, but only what we make of our past, how we travel onward with our experiences, both sweet and bitter). ‘Writing the book has brought openings, to people whose names I had scarcely heard, about whose lives I once knew nothing but now understand more. It has opened the door too to greater understanding of the plight of today’s refugees, desperate to gain the precious documents which will allow them to cross the borders between persecution and freedom, death and life; desperate to save their families, their children.’ I think of my great-aunt Sophie’s recipes, my great-grandmother sending food parcels from Nazi controlled Czechoslovakia to those even worse of – as long as she was allowed – and I see those who need such gifts around us today.

The Haggadah is thus also the story of all humankind. Some years ago, the leader of the local Bravanese community, whose centre was burnt down in a racially motivated arson attack, came to our Seder. ‘Your story is my story too. We said: “Our persecutors will kill us. We have to leave our home country at once!” My aged grandfather said, “I’m too old to leave”. We took him with us, and we fled…’

Avadim hayyinu, ve’attah bnei chorin – ‘we once were slaves but now are free’: how many people across the world are longing to share that song. In Britain, Europe, America, Israel, refugees wait in hope of leave to remain, in terror of deportation. These are the better countries; in many others they would not even have been allowed to enter, on pain of death. The Haggadah is the story of our vision of redemption for all humankind, for the day, as Isaiah puts it in the Prophetic vision we read on the final morning of the festival, ‘when none shall hurt or destroy in all God’s holy mountain’.

Precisely for this reason, the story of the Haggadah is also deeply personal: ‘we must see ourselves as if we ourselves are each going out of Egypt’. Where are we, in our conscience and spirit, on our own inner journey towards justice, compassion and freedom? What inner traits, what internal Pharaohs, detain us from being the person we could be and dream of becoming? For, according as we travel our own inner journey, so we are able to help others on humanity’s journey, and offer others the kindness, the companionship, the advocacy, the compassion, the music, the hope, which sings in our own soul. And, as we reach out to them, so others hopefully reach inward to us.

May our Haggadah, the telling of our story on Seder night, be fruitful and worthwhile.

12 Nisan 5778/28th March 2018

The central symbol of the Seder is the Matzah. Following the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans and the formal cessation of sacrificial offerings, matzah replaced the Paschal lamb as the key food of the Passover celebration.

Matzah features repeatedly in the Seder. Close to the opening, it is described as Halachma Anya, ‘the bread of poverty’ our ancestors ate in Egypt. It was probably originally at this point that the door would be opened, to welcome in the hungry and the poor. In No Time For Tears, the touching account of his East End childhood in the 1930’s, Sidney Bloch recalls how his parents never locked the front door and always laid an extra place at the table.

Shmuel Hanagid (993 – 1056) has a simple culinary explanation:

Some say bread of poverty means, literally, the bread of the poor – because poor people, in the severity of their destitution, will take some floor, knead it and bake it into unleavened bread which they eat immediately…

The middle matzah is now broken, to represent how, as the Talmud, explains a poor person never has a complete loaf, only a torn half. Eli Wiesel provides a frighteningly poignant insight: the person in terror of starvation, who never knows from where the next miniscule, inadequate meal will come, doesn’t dare to eat a whole piece of bread, but hides half fearfully away.

The broken half is held up repeatedly during as we recount the story of slavery, remembering the suffering of our forebears in Egypt, and others who once were, and all who still today are, the slaves of hunger and exploitation.

Close to the end of the narrative, the very same matzah becomes the bread our ancestors take with them on their journey of freedom. It turns into the bread of hope, or, as the Zohar names it, the food of faith, mechla de’meheimanuta, and lachma de’asuta, the bread of healing. This health is moral rather than physical: it is the healing-power present in the society where those who are replete do not forget those who are hungry and use their freedom to set others free.

Matzah thus makes the journey from slavery to freedom alongside us.

There are still two further features which connect matzah with liberty. In a creative word play, the Talmud (Pesachim 115b – 116a) links lechem oni, the bread of poverty, with the verb oneh, ‘answer’. Matzah is the bread ‘over which matters are answered’. It is the food of discourse, of questions and discussions. Freedom of speech is an essential, primary freedom. In a totalitarian regime, in a country where people know that their every word may be overheard and reported, even in a household dominated by domestic tyranny, no one dares to speak out openly. ‘Bread over which matters are answered’, over which significant issues are challenged, debated and considered from a multitude of angles, is the bread of freedom indeed.

The Talmud takes this one step further. Baking matzah requires team-work. This is depicted clearly in numerous Haggadah illustrations: one person is measuring the flour, others are mixing the dough and yet others rolling it out, while further figures make the holes, put the pastry in the oven, take it out and place the finished matzah in baskets.

The right to collaboration is a form of liberty. The freedom to meet in open fellowship and association has been banned or controlled by every totalitarian regime. Nazi plans for the annexation of western Poland after their swift victory in 1939 included making it illegal for Poles to gather together, even in sports clubs or cafes. (Jews were simply deported).

Matzah, in contrast, celebrates and embodies the freedom of friendship and co-operation.

In Temple times, the last taste of the Pesach meal was the lamb of the Paschal offering. In place of that today, the final food we are supposed to eat is the Afikoman, the other half of the matzah broken close to the outset of the Seder, so that we end the night with freedom on our tongue, and in our songs.

11 Nisan 5778/27th March 2018

The greatest challenge to leading a Seder is how to include everyone, from the person determined to ‘do it my way’ to the child, or adult, for whom the key question isn’t Mah Nishtanah, but ‘How long to the food?’ How can a Seder be a discussion, not a row? How can everyone have a voice?

The Haggadah presents this issue through the Four Children. Each takes his or her question straight from the Torah, which mentions four times how to reply ‘when your child asks you tomorrow’.

I prefer to think of the four not as ‘personality types’, but as complementary voices in the great Haggadah debate.

Easiest to respond to are the encouraging enquiries of the ‘wise child’. Such persons refuse to take their own culture for granted. They are seekers; they want to understand Jewish practise, down to the detail. We need them in our communities; we must encourage them to study, in depth. The sound-byte, tweet-length, instant answer culture is dangerous, warns Timothy Snyder in his challenging On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (an excellent supplement for a Seder). Read, study, examine in depth.

Hard as it may seem, we need the ‘wicked child’s’ challenging ‘What’s this to you?’ Contempt is hard to include at the table: why should we? But anger may be a different matter. I’ve an orthodox colleague in Israel who’s angry: ‘How can I sit at the Seder while we deport asylum seekers?’ If that Seder amounts only to food plates and platitudes, there’s good reason to provoke us with anger. It’s hypocrisy to talk freedom but do nothing about the slavery of hunger, or the actual trade in slaves today, or any of those countless ways in which life is degraded and robbed of liberty and joy. Anger, justly warranted, must be turned into motivation.

The so-called ‘simple’ child also has an essential contribution. The Hebrew tam equally means ‘whole-hearted’. Such ‘children’ refuse to be deviated by details. Every group needs the voice which ask bluntly, ‘What’s this?’ It’s a counter-force to the dangerous tendency of religions to get lost in rituals and dogmas. ‘What’s this?’ calls us back to the purpose of the story. ‘Tell that child about the Exodus’ – and keep it simple, the Haggadah insists. Don’t let the cleaning, koshering, shopping and cooking (all important, all of which I love) make us forget the essential values of freedom, justice and dignity, or the travails our families passed through to attain them. We are accountable before God, history, our own People and all humanity for their defence.

Surely, though, the child who doesn’t know how to ask has no part in the discussion? However, the real meaning of she’eno yode’a lishe’ol is not ‘can’t ask’ but ‘lacks the confidence to ask’. Whether it’s because they’re young, or shy, or quiet with reflection, it’s up to us to bring such participants in. Perhaps it’s precisely the silent guest on whom the narrative is having the most impact. How many scenes do we harbour in our hearts where we spoke nothing, because they spoke unforgettably to us?

We all need all our voices, the longing for knowledge, the indignation, the desire to grasp – clearly and simply – the overall purpose, and the absorption of the listener reluctant to interrupt.

10 Nisan 5778/26th March 2018

Getting There

I heard two (slightly conflicting) views last weekend: first, that the week before Pesach has the lowest mortality rate in the Jewish year because everyone wants to make it to another Seder; second, that the nervous breakdown rate is the highest. So here are some thoughts on how to reach Seder night in good mental, physical and spiritual health.

Preparing for the Seder is as much about community as the Seder itself. If someone else in the family or among our friends is doing all the work, (cleaning, shopping, cooking, inviting, setting the table) we should ask ourselves why, and go and help. Wherever possible, no one should be left to prepare for the Seder alone.

Looking Outward

The Lovell Haggadah (a beautiful new edition, warmly recommended) has a wonderful double page. On one side is the title Turning Outward; on the other Turning Inward. The outward page focusses on Me’ot Hittin, ‘coins for wheat’, also known as Kimcha dePischa or ‘Pesach flour’. They exemplify the ancient rule that even the poorest person must be given the necessaries to celebrate Passover. We may not sit down to celebrate our freedom while other families can’t afford to do so. Freedom for some is not true freedom. We are all responsible towards the entire community of Israel. We should respond to at least some of the appeals for help which we no doubt all receive.

Similarly, we should do our utmost to ensure that no one is left to celebrate on their own. The Mishnah explains that a person alone on Seder night ‘asks him- or her-self the four questions’. It’s a lonely image; we shouldn’t allow it to happen.

By extension, we can’t drink to our own redemption while doing nothing at all for others, whoever they are, who are enslaved by hunger, homelessness or persecution. Turning a blind eye to the humiliation and misery of others, risks leading us into partnership with tyranny.

Looking Inward

The opposite page in the Lovell Haggadah describes the inner process of preparation. Mystics have long made a parallel between the domestic procedure of going through our drawers to remove the chametz and leaven and the spiritual process of cleansing our conscience.

Cupboards are memories: ‘Who gave me this mug?’ ‘My mother loved that plate.’ Recipes are testaments: ‘My grandmother made her charoset this way.’ My father cooked the soup.’ Thus we revisit the journeys of our generations and our own life talks back at us from pots and pans.

The Seder does not come alive just by reading the printed text. We must weave our own family stories into the Haggadah and include the stories of others. In this way we make the narrative ours, immediate, vital. Freedom, dignity, justice, journeys: the subjects are always contemporary. I began one Seder by reading the postcard my great-grandmother sent from Theresienstadt. It was written by order of the Nazis to ‘reassure’ the family that ‘everything was alright’:

My Dears! I’m often together with dear Recha; we talk a lot about you and all our dear ones. I’m most anxious about our dear children. I’ve been in the old age home for a while and I feel fine there. Heartfelt greetings from your faithful Regina Freimann.

‘Dear’ occurs four times in scarcely forty words. Love and tyranny – the eternal polarities of human existence.