Clergy Sermons

Someone at my first night seder offered an astute observation. I’m abashed to say, we had a full table, and I can’t remember who said this, as I would have liked to give them credit. They pointed out that Judaism often asks us to “remember”. The Purim-Passover season begins with Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat on which we are commanded to remember Amalek. In the kiddush every Friday night, we make a declaration: זכר ליציאת מצרים, in memorial of the exodus from Egypt. At the end of each set of holidays we recite Yizkor, a memorial prayer for family and close friends.

The seder is an act of memory, not of history. Historians attempt to study the past with dispassionate objectivity. They can disagree about interpretation of events, or about whether one event caused another or not. But if they disagree about historical facts, it’s with the understanding that only one set of facts is correct. 

Memory is quite different. Memories shift over time, and two people can hold quite different memories of the same event. And to remember something, you have to have been part of it. And yet, none of us were there when Amalek attacked us. None of us were actually slaves in Egypt.

Our ancestors were fascinated by the past, but most were not historians. The great rabbis of earlier generations showed remarkably little interest in the historicity of events. For them, the past was alive. Abraham and Sarah, Joseph, King David - they all live in each and every one of us. Bits of our souls reenact their stories all the time. Each of us was present at Mt. Sinai, and each of us is obligated to see ourselves as having been liberated from Egypt.

The word Haggadah comes from the verb l’hagid, to tell. It derives from a verse in Exodus 13:8, part of one of 4 passages that inspired the piece about the four children:

וְהִגַּדְתָּ֣ לְבִנְךָ֔ בַּיּ֥וֹם הַה֖וּא לֵאמֹ֑ר בַּעֲב֣וּר זֶ֗ה עָשָׂ֤ה ה לִ֔י בְּצֵאתִ֖י מִמִּצְרָֽיִם׃ 

And you shall explain to your child on that day, ‘It is because of what Ado-nai did for me when I went free from Egypt.’

The verse says you should do this haggadah, this telling or explaining, “on that day”. On what day? Passover. But which Passover?  Look back at verse 6. Moses is speaking to the Israelites, as they are about to leave Egypt. But he is commanding them that in the future - when they arrive in the land of Israel - they must observe Passover as an annual holiday. The interesting thing is, the people he was speaking to never did arrive in the land. It’s their children who entered the land. And yet, the commandment of וְהִגַּדְתָּ֣ לְבִנְךָ֔, and you shall explain to your children, is understood to apply to the generation that entered the land, and all future generations. Even though, factually, ‘It is because of what Ado-nai did for me when I went free from Egypt’ – is not true, for them. 

Are we to lie to our children? 

A little delving into the root and conjugation of the word “haggadah” is revealing. The root is נגד. The same root as the word neged, which means against or opposed to or to stand opposite. Either partners or combatants can be described as neged. The word nagad means to be conspicuous. But haggadah or l’hagid has a hifil conjugation - for Hebrew grammar buffs, that is why the נ has dropped out. For the rest of us, words that are conjugated in hifil usually indicate causation. To do something TO something else. So l’hagid is not just to say something, but to cause a change in it. Perhaps, as our translator here suggests, it means to explain it - that is, to cause it to be understood. Or perhaps, something more. Perhaps l’hagid actually means to change the truth, or the reality, of the story that you are telling, through the telling of it. To make it conspicuous. To bring it out into the world, so that others may stand in relation to it.  

Did Ado-nai really do this for me when I went out of Egypt? As we tell it, we make it so. It’s not history, it’s our story, and we create it about ourselves. 

Another interesting thing about the phrasing of this verse - Ado-nai did it for ME. It’s the story of an entire people, and it is also each person’s personal story. 

Every person’s life is a story. Our stories grow, and change, and intertwine, like living vines. My story is part of the story of my people, and that of my people is part of mine. The stories of each person in my family is part of my story, and mine is part of theirs.

The stories of every friend, and colleague, and every person who has impacted me, is part of my story. 

When a person dies, their story seems to end. If they die too young, that ending is harshly cruel, like a vine hacked off to leave a gaping hole in the mesh. We are left thinking about the experiences they never got to have, and that severing can be unbearable. Even when a person has lived life to its fullest, still when their story reaches its conclusion, their absence shifts and stretches our own story, often painfully.

But the Torah offers us another way to think of their stories. They don’t end. “Because of what Ado-nai did for ME when I went out of Egypt.” The story of the slaves, their suffering, their freedom-  it continues not because we can watch the Prince of Egypt while munching popcorn, and are entertained. Their story continues because we are commanded to live it. And that means it continues to change and grow with us. Not everything that lives is contained in a physical body.  

Rabban Gamliel’s rephrasing of the Torah’s commandment reveals how difficult this is. We must see ourselves as IF we went out of Egypt. To really embody, to really become part of their story and let their story live through us - that’s not easy to do. It is easier with someone who was personally, deeply part of your own life. My grandmother is so real to me, though she has been gone for 20 years, I’m still in conversation with her in my mind. My grief over her loss, and my anger at the difficult parts of her personality, have long ago been put to rest, and I am grateful that her story continues with mine. It’s also different when a loss is more intensely painful. I think in that situation we have no choice BUT to keep that person alive. Loss of a child, loss of a husband or wife. The surviving parent or spouse may find they think of their lost one every single day. Their story appears unbidden within their own, and may offer little comfort. And - as painful as it is - that sorrow, too, is keeping the story alive of their loved one alive.

From a traditional perspective, reciting Yizkor is not something we do because it makes US feel better. It might make us feel better, and it might now. We Yizkor because it is a mitzvah, just as telling the story of the exodus is a mitzvah. Because every life is a story. And by continuing to engage with the stories of those who are physically gone, we ensure that their stories remain alive.