What a mixture of moods and emotions hover over the Seder table. What a heart-warming scene: grandparents, parents and children, relatives, friends and the lonely stranger, have all come together to reenact an ancient ritual that stirs both memory and history; that forges another link in the unbroken chain of tradition, stretching from the first Seder celebrated in Egypt to the very latest Seder, here and now.

Rabbi Max Fox Reciting the Haggadah, eating matzo, morror and charoses, constitute more than the mere performance of a ritual. We are, literally, to use Israel Zangill’s picturesque phrase, “eating history.” In that one festive observance, we are not simple commemorating an isolated event in our ancient past. We are reliving the whole panorama of Jewish experience. We are revisiting every Egypt and every Exile in which the Jew lived, enduring with him the bitterness of slavery and oppression, confronting with him every tyrant and taskmaster, and rejoicing with him in the ultimate redemption of our people.

We drink with him a toast to freedom, four times repeated, lifting our cup of wine as we thank G-d who “brought us from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from sadness to festivity, from darkness to great light and from bondage to redemption.

In the face of rising anti- Semitism inquisitions, expulsions, pogroms, wars, terrorism and a Holocaust unparalleled in all history, the Jew remains confident and indestructible, as we passionately proclaim in the words of the Haggadah:

“In every generation there are those who seek to destroy us, but the Holy One, blessed be He, delivers us from their hands.