We like to imagine freedom as a moment of triumph, a sea splitting, a people rising, chains breaking with a loud and final crack. And yet, when we sit down at the Seder table, we do not begin with power. We do not begin with miracles. We begin with something almost embarrassingly simple:

“Ha lachma anya di achalu avhatana b’ara d’Mitzrayim…Kol dichfin yeitei v’yeichol, kol ditzrich yeitei v’yifsach.”

“This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt.Let all who are hungry come and eat; let all who are in need come and join”

It is a strange opening. If we are here to tell a story of liberation, why begin with the bread of poverty? If we are here to celebrate dignity, why return to a symbol of deprivation? Why, on the night that tells the story of our becoming a free people, do we begin not with what we gained, but with what we lacked? Unless, of course, this is precisely the point.

The Haggadah is quietly teaching us something radical: freedom is not defined by what you have, but by what you are able to give.

To understand this, I want to take you to a very different place in history far from the Seder table.

In “If This Is a Man”, Primo Levi........

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