“He begins with the Jewish people’s disgrace and concludes with their glory. And he expounds from the passage ‘An Aramean tried to destroy my father’ (Deuteronomy 26:5) until he concludes the entire story.” (Mishna Pesachim 10a)
For most of my life, I have seen the Passover seder as an experience of and celebration of freedom. Tulips and daffodils on the table, singing songs, the smell of spring. In recent years, I’ve seen the seder through the lens of the rabbis of the Mishna trying to embody the methods of the Roman symposium, which for them was the ultimate opposite to being enslaved—sitting around, feasting, and sharing thoughts on a philosophical topic, in our case Freedom.
This year, though, I’m connecting with a very different aspect of the seder and its story: The story of the Exodus from Egypt is actually a hard story to tell. It’s the story of our oppression and enslavement. Violence against us. The attempt to annihilate us and to take away all our hope. The murder of our children. We are supposed to start there, in the middle of the hardest thing, and then move to redemption. Yes, we know the second half of the story, how it will end. But the first half is something that really, I’d rather not have to talk about at all.
When the body of the last of the hostages was returned in January, I thought maybe this chapter of antisemitism was going to settle down. However, with the start of Israel and the US’s war on Iran in February, things became even more heated here in Toronto. Over the course of two weeks, three different synagogues had bullets shot at their front doors and windows. I got multiple security alerts from all the Jewish institutions we attend, outlining the ways they were increasing security staff and physical reinforcements above and beyond what they were already doing. And then of course the horrifying car ramming attack of Temple Israel near Detroit, only a few hours drive from here.
After spending the last two-and-a-half years navigating how to explain to my children about October 7, about the hostages, about the war, about the protests, about the additional police outside their school, I had to figure out how to explain to my children a new hard thing: Why I was going to Friday night services for a special solidarity Shabbat, when we usually only go to services as a family on Saturday mornings. I had to decide how much to tell each child, ages 10 and 13, based on their temperament and abilities. Should I expound upon all the details? Should I just tell the basics and allow them to ask more questions? How should I tell this story of the hard thing?
This is why the Passover seder is hitting me differently this year. I think it contains a different wisdom than I have usually seen in it. If the seder is a model of how to tell the story of the hard thing, what can we learn from it?
1. Tell the story to ourselves first.
We, the ones who experienced or are experiencing the hard thing, are the most important people to hear the story. There have been many efforts to document and show the horrors of October 7 and its aftermath to non-Jews so that they will understand and sympathize with what Jews have gone through. The seder teaches us to make sure we are telling our own stories to each other first—to sigh with relief that someone else understands what we are going through, to create circles of care for our tender fears and grief. Others can witness us and our internal conversation, in our unique Jewish way of expressing, if they would like to understand us.
2. Tell the difficult story in the presence of loved ones.
The seder teaches us that when we tell a difficult story, we should be sure we are surrounded by people we care about who care about us, with comforting pillows, wine, and food. It’s a difficult enough story without making it harder. Take care of yourself. Find comfort and support. Don’t be alone.
3. Everyone gets to be part of telling the story.
From the Haggadah text itself—which includes many different named and unnamed teachers, children, characters, and opinions—to the people around the seder table, often taking turns to read the words on the page, the seder teaches us that everyone’s voice is part of the story. In fact, everyone’s perspective put together makes up the ultimate story. We didn’t experience the hard thing alone, we don’t tell it alone, and in fact, we can learn from each other’s versions. It is a gift to know that even a hard story can have multiple perspectives: It opens the possibility that perhaps our own perspective on our hard story might change someday, too.
4. People act and God acts to bring about a good ending.
Many have noted that the traditional text of the Haggadah doesn’t actually include what you might suspect should be there: the names of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, and what they did to bring the Jews out of slavery in Egypt. Yet they are present as an undercurrent; we know the text of Exodus, which hums beneath the text of the Haggadah. The seder tells us we need both humans and God working in concert when the hard thing is happening. The lesson I am taking is that some things we simply don’t have control over. And some we do. Discerning which one is which is key to being able to walk through a difficult time.
5. Hope for change is most important when it is least plausible.
There was no reason for the Israelites to think that their enslavement would end after so many generations. There are amazing midrashim elaborating on how the Israelites maintained their identity (keeping their names, their language, and their ethical practices) or maintained their hope (the women continuing their relationships with their husbands and building families, despite Pharoah’s decrees) over those almost endless centuries. The Haggadah text emphasizes over and over the miracle of being redeemed; it was a miracle because it was so unlikely.
6. The children are always listening.
The seder evening is most especially for the children, that they should listen and they should ask. How do we tell the story of the hard thing for the children? Isn’t that who we most in this world want to protect from knowing the horrors and feeling fear? The seder says, we tell the children. What do we want them to know about us, to learn about us, and therefore to learn about themselves and their own possibilities, by watching how we encounter hard times and hard memories? Hard things are also for children. We just have to relay them in an appropriate way, responding like to the four children: Each according to what they can understand.
7. It’s important to talk about the hard things.
I made this mistake. I didn’t tell my kids about October 7, or details about the war that followed, or when new terrible things happened. I didn’t want to hurt them or make them scared. But my daughter said recently, “When something happens, you have to tell me, or I’ll hear it from another way.” I didn’t want to talk about it because I, on a fundamental level, didn’t want the hard thing to be true. I wanted to erase it by denying it.
I realized after my daughter spoke with me about it that I didn’t want my children to learn that hard things should be secret. When we talk about the hard thing, we get to shape how it is told.
Yes, at our Passover seders, we start with degradation—with the hard thing, and because we know how the story will end, we get to end with celebration and praise. The seder is to teach us how to do both of those things: To honor the difficult story, and to celebrate being here to tell it.