Jewish, Proud, and Unapologetic |
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One of the central commandments set forth in the Haggadah–right up there with the wine and the matzoh–is the Torah-based imperative to relate the story of the Exodus, and the Sages augmented the mitzvah by saying that anyone who elaborates on the story is praiseworthy. Accordingly, there is no shortage of entertaining, incisive, informative, and brilliant glosses on substantially every paragraph and concept in the Haggadah.
All of us who have sat at the head of the table have favorites. When you have repeated it every year for decades it becomes part of the service, an element of daily lore, a generational asset.
Only rarely do you get a chance to rethink it in a way that improves it. It just happened to me, and I feel the need to share.
The narrative starts with the standard question about dayenu: would it really have been sufficient if God had taken us out of Egypt and allowed us to starve to death in the desert, not given us the Torah, not blessed........