The phrase “Next Year in Jerusalem” — “לשנה הבאה בירושלים” — is declared at the end of two of Judaism’s most important holidays: on Yom Kippur, in the synagogue at the very end of a long day of fasting; and on Passover, around your dining table, at the very end of the Seder.

It is the Passover Seder’s final Hebrew acclamation, and parallels the opening Aramaic passage, “Ha Lachma Anya”: “Now we are here; next year may we be in the Land of Israel. Now we are slaves; next year may we be free people.”

To say “Next Year in Jerusalem” on Passover is linked to hope: because it turns the Seder from a backward‑looking commemoration of the Exodus in the distant past into a forward‑looking claim that Jewish history is still open, changeable, and potentially redemptive. The phrase marks the Seder’s last words not as memory but as expectation: that by next year the world, and the condition of the Jewish people, can be better.

By ending with “Next Year in Jerusalem,” the night is framed as a movement from present exile to future redemption. But over the ages of Jewish civilization, what does “redemption” mean?

To understand this, we first need to know how the expression “Next Year in Jerusalem” — “לשנה הבאה בירושלים” — entered the Haggadah.

The Haggadah’s core structure took shape in Jewish Babylonia, in the Geonic period (roughly 600–900 CE). Saadia Gaon’s 10th‑century prayer book contains our oldest complete surviving Haggadah. By codifying a full Seder order (sequential blessings, the four cups, major sections of Maggid, Hallel, and Nirtzah),........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)