This week our families gather around the Seder table again. Let’s hope and pray that our relatives and friends throughout the world will have calm (no sirens) and uplifting experiences. There are so many passages in the Haggadah meant to inspire us, but this year I would like to focus on one stirring quote: In each and every generation each of us is obligated to see themselves as if they personally were redeemed from Egyptian bondage.

‘Personally’? Isn’t that a tall order? How exactly should we even approach this task? 

The Rambam makes a subtle change in that statement: In each and every generation one must make oneself appear as if they had escaped from Egyptian bondage now.’ In other words, sort of play act that you’re leaving Egypt, now. It may seem corny to put on pseudo slave clothes or march around the table with Matzah on your shoulder, but it does make the point. 

But for the rest of us, what do we do? Well, Rabbi Dr. Avraham Twerski explains that it’s not that hard to fulfill this requirement because God provided humans with ‘creative imaginations’ and ‘ingenious minds which can create three dimensional scenes in rich colors’.  Okay, I’m not sure that my imagination is as acute as his was.

The S’fat HaYam (Rav Altshuler, 1819) suggests that we’re not trying to claim that we personally left Egypt.Rather, we see this obligation as based on the reality that if our ancestors were not freed from Egyptian servitude then we would still be there. In other words, we are declaring that our present situation is a direct result of what God did back then for our........

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