The Haggadah text, seder ritual and symbols are like a time capsule or survival kit or genetic code of everything Jewish, our memories of the past and dreams of the future. Like a time capsule, it contains representative fragments that remind us of each of our incarnations, wandering shepherds and farmers, slaves in a foreign land , wanderers again, a federation of clans, a kingdom priests, exiles, honeybees carrying the pollen of civilization from culture to culture, futher wandering, descent into bondage, while at the same time creating an invisible democratic, self-governing country of the mind that spanned the globe, to return to our land, all of this repeating and repeating for millennia. Pick up a fragment of an Aramaic invitation from Babylonia, and stuck to it you'll find something to do with the expulsion from Spain in 1492. Another shard from the Middle Ages about a biblical figure is tied up with a bit of medieval philosophy and a Holocaust story. It is a jumble, but somehow everything is evoked. And as we have been privileged to perfom it, we are in it too.

LIke a survival kit, it contains everything necessary for enduring the most hostile environments. Here are the basic myths, parables, legends and stories, the modes of thought, the paradigms, the symbols and rituals, the questioning, the commentary, the intense analysis, the food and songs, the humor and pathos, that are the Jewish people. In it is everything else that is Jewish apart from Passover as well. All the rest of the calendar, the holidays, the diet, the law, our languages, history, culture and customs, the reverance for learning and love of Israel, all are implicit in Passover.

Like a genetic code, it contains the bare minimum amount of genetic information to allow one generation to produce the succeeding Jewish generation. As long as the seder is carried out, there is the possibiity of the Jewish people continuing. As long as we continue to keep it, so it will keep us.


haggadah Section: Conclusion