by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

April 24, 2008

When the men of the Great Assembly compiled the Passover Haggada, slavery was very much a reality. In that part of the world, the free would feast during special banquets while reclining on a divan, the actual meal served on a small table to the diner’s left. Thus the Passover seder, celebrating the passage of the early Hebrews from slavery to freedom, attempts to symbolically capture this newfound state by requiring us to recline while eating.

In the first mishna of chapter 10, Tractate Pesachim, we are instructed that during the seder meal, “…even a pauper among Israelites should not eat until he reclines, and he should be given not less than four glasses of wine, even if he’s so poor that he eats from the public plate.”

The Mishna strikes at the heart of what Passover is about. One night a year, even the hard-core poor throw off the shackles of their misery and celebrate this festival, which speaks of a nation of slaves transformed into a free people. And all of us on the ‘tzedaka committee’ must make sure that every last Jew shall be given the opportunity to recline like the freest of men.

Our Mishna’s concern that even the poorest of Israelites recline is based on a midrashic comment to a verse in Exodus, where we read that when Pharaoh finally lets Moses’ people go...“God therefore made the people take a roundabout path, by way of the desert...” (13:18)

The Hebrew word for ‘being made to take a roundabout path’ is ‘vayasev,’ strangely enough the very same root of the Hebrew word to recline (yesev). Clearly the linguistic connection, which has been noted by many biblical interpreters, is much more than merely coincidental and certainly deserves comment.

When we think about the Exodus from Egypt, the reason why God makes the Jews take a roundabout path is given in the text itself (v. 17): God wants to avoid the shorter route, which would have caused the Hebrews to pass through land of the Philistines, an aggressive nation who might very well attack and frighten the Israelites into retreat. Despite having witnessed the fall of the Egyptian empire, the miracles of the Ten Plagues, and the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, the Jews are still frightened to wage war, to fight back. Remember that when Pharaoh and his chariots chase after the Israelites before the Red Sea, no one (not even Moses) thinks of the possibility of fighting against them. Apparently slavery is not just skin-deep. It reaches into a person’s essence. God knows the Jews are still slaves at heart.

This is certainly a major reason for Moses’ ability to lead the Jewish people: he was raised in the palace of Pharaoh, without the fear of a slave, devoid of a slave mentality. Slavery is a tragedy, and one of its consequences is how the victim ends up internalizing the accusations made against him, believing himself to be a worthless parasite, incapable of fighting for his rights.

Indeed, Moses learns this lesson after he slays the Egyptian task-master, an act he had probably hoped would incite and inspire the Hebrew slaves to rise up against their captors and demand their freedom. The very next day, when he tries to break up a fight between two Hebrews, they taunt him for having killed the Egyptian; instead of hailing Moses as a hero because he risked his own life to save a fellow Jew, they throw his actions back into his face. Moses now realizes “...the incident is known…” (Exodus 15:2). If he wants to save his life, he must flee at once. Slavery corrupts captor and captive alike.

There is yet another issue. Power may corrupt, absolute power may corrupt absolutely — but powerlessness corrupts most of all. A magnificent post-Holocaust Australian play, The Edge of Night, has a former Kapo declare: “There were no heroes in Auschwitz, there were only those who were murdered and those who survived.” And a slave feels impotent, uncertain of his ability to obtain food, and becomes almost obsessed with the desire for a piece of bread — almost at any cost.

From this second perspective, the desert possesses not only a stark landscape but also a stark moral message concerning the transformation of an enslaved Hebrew into a freed Hebrew.

The Haggada begins with the words, “This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the Land of Egypt. Who is hungry, let him come and eat, who is in need, let him come and join celebrating the Passover festival.” This is more than just generous hospitality; it is fundamental to Jewish freedom, the transition from a frightened, selfish, and egocentric mentality of keeping the food for oneself into a free and giving mode of sharing with those less fortunate.

Now we understand clearly why the Midrash connects ‘reclining’ with a ‘roundabout’ path. It goes far beyond use of the same root. The very purpose of this path is intended to purge the state of mind that still thinks like a slave, frightened not only of Philistines, but of another mouth who one fears is always waiting to take away the little bit that one has.

And when we give so that others too may have and feel free, we are proving in a most profound way that we are no longer slaves.

Shlomo Riskin is the chief rabbi of the city of Efrat and dean of Ohr Torah Institutes in Israel.

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