At the heart of Maggid we declare: “Arami oved avi.” Resisting simplicity, this phrase can mean, “An Aramean sought to destroy my father,” or “My father was a wandering Aramean.” The Haggadah expands upon the former, recounting threat and vulnerability. Yet the latter has echoed through Jewish memory as well.

Our ancestors were sadly accustomed to wandering. Displacement endangers the body as much as it unsettles the soul. To wander is to live with uncertainty and fills the heart with questions about belonging and, most painfully, whether the Covenant still travels with us.

Before Sinai, before kingship, before the Temple, there was movement. “Lech Lecha”: Our origins are rooted not in permanence but in pathways. We leave our parent’s homes. We leave Egypt. We wander in the wilderness. Even the declaration brought with first fruits compresses our identity into a pattern of movements: wandering, descent, oppression, and redemption. While Jewish history unfolds through migration and displacement, the brith/ Covenant is never abandoned.

Exile forced our ancestors to discover that holiness is not confined to geography. When the First Temple fell and our people were carried away to Babylon, it could have marked the end. Instead, Judaism became portable. Prayer replaced sacrifice. Study stood above sovereignty. The home became sanctified as an incubator of sacred responsibility.

When a later generation returned to Israel and laid the cornerstone of the Second Temple, the Book of Ezra reads: “And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads, who had seen the former Temple, wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this Temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping” (Ezra 3:11–13). In this scene of mingled sound, some wept, remembering what had been lost. Others shouted for joy at what might yet be built. The noise of sorrow and hope blended together until no one could distinguish one from the other.

The Seder preserves this layered consciousness. We recline like free people, yet we lift the bread of affliction. We dip leafy greens into salt water, recalling the tears of sorrow as much as the those of gratitude for redemption tasted like the coming of spring. Like the generation of Ezra, we hold grief and hope in a single breath.

In different eras, Jews recognized symbols of hope in the lands to which they journeyed. For many who crossed oceans in earlier generations, the image of Lady Liberty’s torch lifted in New York’s distant harbor felt like a heartening sign that wandering might lead to dignity rather than despair. Such symbols did not replace Jerusalem. They did not dissolve longing. But they reflected an ancient conviction that light can guide a people through uncertainty toward possibility.

Each year we speak as wanderers even when we sit securely at our tables, echoed by the sentiments of The Lord of the Rings’s author, J.R.R Tolkien: “Not all those who wander are lost.”

Passover does not allow comfort to erase memory. It insists that we begin our story with migration and displacement. In doing so, the seder transforms vulnerability into covenantal resilience. Covenant grounds us before geography did, and its promise orients us in a way that borders never could.

We conclude the Seder with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Across centuries of wandering, we embrace that Jewish life can be characterized by perpetual motion and longing. And yet we are never without home, because Covenant and hope travel with us wherever we wander.

(This article appeared in “In Every Generation: Immigration as a Jewish Value – A Passover Haggadah Supplement” co-edited by Dr. Ora Horn Prouser and Rabbi Menachem Creditor)

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