Let’s Learn Haggadah!
by R. Gidon Rothstein
For the past two years, in this slot, we studied Aruch HaShulchan, a single, although very important, halachic authority. I drift more towards taking multiple perspectives of a text, and seeing where that leads. In halachah, it’s done very commonly, it’s how we lead to pesak, decisions.
I want to do it for something else. I’ve been doing it with the parashah of the week for a few years now, am up to review for what it yields in overall lessons, so let’s start on the path for another text, one that almost all Jews know well: the Haggadah. A section a week (Twenty-four weeks until Pesach! Mind where you place chametz!), I want to see what four commentators said about the Haggadah.
[Modesty moment: I had wild ideas of doing more, one for each century from Rashi on, then dropped to six, including R. Shlomo Kluger, a voluminous but very interesting commentary. As I wrote this essay, it became clear four is going to easily fill our time.]
By “said,” I mean their actual comment, and then how their interests were the same or different. I’ll summarize and put them in conversation with each other.
For commentators, I have chosen a commentary called Meyuchas Le-Rashi (from the Haggadah Im Perushei Rishonim of Mossad HaRav Kook), because it’s fairly early, and mostly combines material from Siddur Rashi (a student of Rashi’s) and a Perush Kadmon, from the early to mid-1100s. He sort of gives me two for the price of one.
Then, R. Shimon b. Tzemach Duran, a late 14th, early 15th century Spanish rabbi, whose commentary on Avot I once studied, and thought could use another look. From there, I jump to the nineteenth century, Aruch HaShulchan, and R. Kook in the twentieth.
Part of why they got the nod is that their comments are brief enough to allow for four. Perhaps in future years, if we enjoy this, we’ll do only three, or maybe only one (like Maharal, Abarbanel, or R. Shlomo Kluger, all of whom had a great deal to say!). Meanwhile, let’s see how Ha Lachma Anya looks to our four.
The Paragraph Itself
Brief, hopefully neutral, summary: we open the Seder pointing out the lechem oni, either the poor man’s bread, or the bread of affliction, our forefathers ate in Egypt. We then invite—still in Aramaic, the only part of the Haggadah in that language—all who are hungry to come eat, all in need to feast, and note our current residence “here,” pray to be in Israel next year, our current servitude, pray to be free next year.
Meyuchas le-Rashi
The Meyuchas le-Rashi focuses on why the matzah is called lechem oni, gives neither of the options I suggested. He notes the matzah was an amount equal to the man that fell in the desert, a tenth of an ephah, also the amount of a minchat ani, the flour offering a poor person brings if s/he cannot afford certain sacrifices.
For the invitations, he thinks we invite the hungry to remind us to be hungry at the Seder, to eat the matzah with appetite, referencing the Talmudic tale of Rava drinking wine Erev Pesach to stimulate his hunger.
We also invite others to join us for a Pesach sacrifice to make clear we don’t think we can do it on our own, that we don’t feel so rich or disconnected from society not to want to join with others. We want a communal experience, not an individual one.
For the contrast between being “here” and in Israel next year, Meyuchas le-Rashi sees an expression of hope for a different future. Now, we are where we are, we hope next year for the fulfillment of Moshe’s words to the Jewish people, who would explain to their children the zevach Pesach, the Pesach sacrifice (only in the Temple in Jerusalem.)
Meyuchas Le-Rashi, I say after seeing the others, has no central theme. The name lechem oni reminds us of daily man and of flour in a poor man’s offering. We invite the hungry to ensure we eat the matzah hungry, and invite others to remember the value of communal involvement.
With hope for a fuller experience next year.
- Shim’on b. Tzemach Duran
Rashbatz concentrates more on the Seder. He thinks the paragraph was put here to pre-empt some of the questions the removal of the matzah from the table is about to arouse. We already start off awareness that we’re doing this to recall the Exodus (we’ll have to see how he explains Avadim hayyinu, which seems the same answer).
It’s in Aramaic, because that was the language of children, who did know the phrase Next Year in Jerusalem, so we can say that in Hebrew.
For lechem oni, he knows the idea of a minchat ani we saw, but leans toward it being a matter of the Torah’s telling us to eat lechem oni for seven days, to commemorate having left Egypt in haste. It explains why some introduce the paragraph with the Aramaic words for “in haste we left Egypt.” For the child at the Seder, we also say it was the bread our forefathers ate in Egypt, to bring the history alive, I think.
He sees contradictory reasons to speak of the hungry. It, first, hearkens back to Egypt, where our forefathers were hungry (he says), lets us see how fortunate we are to be not. Then switches to the idea we saw, we are supposed to be hungry, anxiously awaiting the matzah we will eat.
For the Pesach issue, he suggests we are gathering lists of people who would join our Pesach if we were having one, in the hopes we will soon return to an actual Pesach, where pre-registration is required. In the manner of clever beggars, we ramp up our requests from easier to harder, from getting to Israel, still slaves, to being freed.
Placing the paragraph more firmly in the Seder.
Aruch HaShulchan
First, AH has an alternate beginning of our paragraph, Ke-ha lachma anya, like this poor man’s bread. To frame his comment, he points us to Yeshayahu 51;1-3, who called on us to remember Avraham and Sarah, referring to them as a rock and a well (for reasons we will see), and moves into speaking of Hashem’s having decided to comfort Tziyyon.
For AH, Yeshayahu was speaking to the despair of those who saw no natural way for salvation to arrive, and encourages them with the reminder our first ancestors were infertile, Avraham like a rock from which no water would come, Sarah like an empty well. Hashem intervened miraculously then, Hashem will do so with the redemption.
The same idea underlies Shemot 12;42’s description of the night of the Exodus as a leil shimurim, a night Hashem had guarded, kept in mind, for a long time. AH thinks it was the expectation of redemption, which was always going to be supernatural.
Bringing it back to our paragraph, Aruch HaShulchan—a community rabbi, mostly in Navardok—says it means to comfort the poor, for whom the expenses of Pesach are often overwhelming, forcing them to accept charity, or more than usual. Our forefathers, too, the paragraph says to them, ate such bread in Egypt, in the sense of being unable to take care of themselves, needing supernatural intervention.
Even if the poor person must be a guest in someone’s house (the reason the paragraph invites the hungry), or take charity, s/he shouldn’t worry or feel bad, because this year we are here, next in Israel, this year slaves, next free, but only by virtue of the kind of help they are getting. Rock bottom, for our full needs, we are all poor in this sense, can only get by with Hashem’s direct intervention.
Ke-ha lachma anya, in AH’s reading, encouragement to all of us for supernatural redemption, and the poor, for whom Pesach might be a particularly troubling time.
- Kook
Rav Kook has multiple comments on our paragraph. First, although the Haggadah has ha lachma, and the commentary points out that R. Tzvi Yehudah Kook, Rav Kook’s son, noted that was the version in Seder R. Amram Ga’on, in Machzor Vitry, Rambam, Tur, and more, R. Kook’s first comment assumes it is ke-ha, as Aruch HaShulchan also had it.
He wonders why we have this paragraph before the Four Questions, especially since one of those questions is about why we eat matzah. In his first answer, this paragraph comes to encourage those distressed by the lack of a Pesach sacrifice, by Jews’ current servitude [he seems to be writing in Europe; R. Tzvi Yehudah Kook’s introduction says the bulk of the commentary was written as part of R. Kook’s siddur, Olat Re’iyah, other parts gathered from his various writings]. For them, we remember our forefathers in Egypt, who also were in servitude, who also saw no way out, and were redeemed.
More, they were redeemed at the last possible second [before they would have completely assimilated], and their redemption grounds our upcoming one. Remembering what happened to them will buck up our spirits, he says.
His second idea notes two paths to flourishing: one is freedom and room to grow, the other, a bit paradoxically, is pressure and restriction, building the urge to burst out, also a path to growth. For an example, the restrictions and withdrawals of winter foster growth in spring.
For the Jewish people, the time in Egypt, under the thumb of a king who denied God, was the pressure that builds and fortifies, the first step to freedom and redemption. And for Torah; had we had knowledge before, we would not have had the openness to receive the Torah. Our intellectual poverty, in his view, allowed us to accept this great gift.
Rediscovering Our Innate Generosity
The twin invitations at the end of the paragraph exemplify how the removal of pressure permits us to flourish. We are a people whose forefather Avraham was characterized by the desire to give and help, a trait we inherited. In the non-Jewish world, life is self-centered, even religiosity and/or altruism, he says, where we Jews want to help others.
Oppression stops us from feeling this way, others stand over us, make our lives hard, rob us of our selves, leaving us willing to help only grudgingly and only with purely physical necessities. Pesach night, we rediscover our freedom, invite others, freely and openly, to eat and to yifsach, a word R. Kook takes to refer to all needs, for the person be able to express him/herself in all the areas of life, physical and spiritual.
Yeitei ve-yechol, come and eat, means basic needs, physical and spiritual, such as the basics of belief in God, with the Pesach sacrifice—ve-yifsach—is about broader values, what we get from eating the Pesach, after we are full, providing something additional.
Ditto for going to Israel and being freed, because one who lives in exile, the Gemara says, is as if s/he has no God, and the rule of others stops us from our full personae. So we predict and pray (he says, both) we will soon be freed of troubles. We speak of next year (rather than the far future) because these freedoms need no preparation, they’re part of who we are, they just need actualization, and that can be immediate.
For R. Kook, then, a paragraph about redemption of the past and redemption of the future, the paths to it and the character of it.
For now, I notice how the later authors seemed to place the paragraph in a framework more external to the Seder topic of the Exodus, focused more on a future of flourishing and/or redemption. We’ll have to see how this plays out going forward.