It’s the same basic narrative. Do you remember the first version you heard? Was it the Maxwell House edition? Or maybe it was the one with the beautiful drawings by Leonard Baskin?
Some versions are longer and some are shorter. The Talmud tells us that the more details we add, the more questions we ask, the deeper we go—the better.
It’s the master story of our People. Its essence can be captured succinctly: “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt; God freed us for a purpose.”
It starts in degradation and oppression. We were slaves and so we must always remember the plight of the slave, the oppressed, the refugee, the “other.” We were liberated and, therefore, we must give thanks. We must be grateful for our good fortune. But our liberation is not the ultimate goal. The purpose of our freedom is to bring freedom to the world. God redeems us from Egypt and then brings us to Sinai so we can receive Torah, the teaching which shows us how we can be God’s partner in repairing the world for all peoples.
This is our story. This is our purpose. It’s not easy—in fact, it’s the most challenging quest imaginable. We are to fix what is broken in our lives, our communities, and our world. We must ask ourselves: In what ways are we still slaves? In what ways must we liberate ourselves? From racism? From partisanship? From stubbornness? From being judgmental or unwilling to listen?
With open hearts, we gather tonight to remind ourselves where we came from and where we are meant to go.
We were slaves. Now, we are free. Tonight, we tell our story. Tomorrow, we change the world.
Rabbi Yoshi