When Rav Lau was a child, a young Holocaust survivor, he was raised by his uncle and aunt, Rabbi and Rebbetzin Fogelman, in Kiryat Motzkin, where Rabbi Mordechai Fogelman served as the rabbi. Just as he made Aliyah after the war, there were thousands of עולים who moved into a tent city walking distance from their home. One ערב פסח, his aunt and uncle sent him to deliver a package supplies to the newly arrived immigrants from the ashes of Europe. When he returned home, Rav Lau expressed such distress at the idea that the survivors would not have a סדר that his aunt and uncle decided to move their סדר to the tent city and spend the night with the survivors. He recounts the experience of one thousand survivors crying out, with utmost כוונה, concentration, “שפוך חמתך על הגוים,” asking G-d to pour out his wrath on the enemies of the Jewish People.
When he himself became a young rabbi, he followed in his aunt and uncle’s footsteps, leading סדרים every year for thousands of people, often for soldiers in the IDF or, as in the year following the Yom Kippur War, for their widows and orphans. At their first seder they conducted for the Israeli Air Force, 1200 soldiers, many of whom were secular, attended, stayed until the end and sang and danced. Noam Weissman relates that one year, as Rabbi Lau was reading הא לחמא עניא at the beginning of מגיד, an officer in the Israeli Air Force asked him a question. The הגדה says:
השתא הכא לשנה הבאה בארעא דישראל השתא עבדי לשנה הבאה בני חורין:
Now we are here, next year in Jerusalem; now we are slaves, next year we will be free people.
The officer pointed out that he was born in Israel, a Sabra, that he had never experienced the antisemitism in Exile, and that he was free and in the Land of Israel. How is the הגדה still relevant to him? This brings up a very important point. The הגדה makes a number of strange choices throughout that seem to deviate from the סדר’s main theme of commemorating the Exodus. Why does the הגדה start and end with phrases that invoke a return to Israel and Jerusalem, לשנה הבאה בארעא דישראל and לשנה הבאה בירושלים? Why not just stick to the theme?
If the only reference to Israel in the הגדה were in הא לחמא עניא, we could explain, as Rav Kook does, that Israel is simply the solution for our invitation to those who are in need to join us. Once the redemption occurs, he says, there won’t be anyone in poverty, and so we invite people now because the redemption hasn’t yet occurred. But there are more questionable choices in the הגדה render this answer insufficient. When the הגדה decides to review Jewish history during מתחילה עובדי עבודה זרה היו, the section of the הגדה that talks about our idolatrous ancestors, it chooses יהושע’s speech, given to the Jewish People in ארץ ישראל after their conquest of the land. Then, when going into the details of the actual Exodus itself, rather than reviewing the פסוקים in ספר שמות that tell us the details of the story at length over four פרשיות, the הגדה chooses four verses from ספר דברים that are actually part of an entirely different ceremony: מקרא ביכורים.
There is a מצוה, mentioned at the beginning of פרשת כי תבוא, for farmers to bring the first fruits that grow each spring as a form of gift to the כהנים serving at the בית המקדש. When they arrive to Jerusalem, the farmer performs a waving ritual with the כהן and then recites a specific text that recounts Jewish history from יעקב until the present day, when they were living and farming in the Promised Land of Israel. Why does the הגדה choose to retell the story of יציאת מצרים, of the Exodus, using a text associated with an entirely different מצוה?
This question, too, has prompted numerous answers from מפרשים. Rabbi Sacks cites Rabbi Zvi Hersh Ferber as explaining that it is important that the ביכורים version of the story is recited by farmers celebrating their wealth. Perhaps using this version is a reminder that wealth does not derive from ourselves nor is it guaranteed to remain our fate. Rabbi Soloveitchik used to explain that ביכורים were brought in the context of הכרת הטוב, of thanksgiving and recognition of the good that G-d has done for us in taking us from a state of abject suffering to a situation of comfort and success. The מצוה of סיפור יציאת מצרים requires not only telling the story but also expressing gratitude for the outcome, our redemption and freedom.
Rav Yitzchak Mirsky and Rav Yehuda Shaviv note that another unique quality of מקרא ביכורים that doesn’t exist in ספר שמות is that it is told from the first-person perspective by the farmer as something that occurred to him, to his people, to his family. To properly transmit the story of the Exodus and have the intended effect, it can’t just be recounted as something that happened a long time ago, like a history book in the non-fiction section of the library. We must feel like it happened to us and is relevant to our lives now.
Rav Yosef Zvi Rimon and Rabbi Shmuel Goldin also note the convenience of the story being compacted into four פסוקים, which conveys two advantages over ספר שמות: First, it is short enough to study in depth to its completion, as opposed to the much longer chapters in שמות. Second, by telling the story in a shorter form, we are forced to analyze each word and engage in תורה שבעל פה, to engage in discussion, inquiry, and debate. Rav Rimon further adds that the מקרא ביכורים text of ארמי אובד אבי serves as a review of a spectrum of Jewish history, putting the Exodus in a larger context and showing how our own experience fits into that broader story.
But my teacher Rav Michael Rosensweig points out that the use of ארמי אובד אבי from מקרא ביכורים might be part of a larger pattern throughout the סדר and the holiday of פסח. The גמרא in בבא בתרא uses a separate verse to derive that ביכורים are only brought to Jerusalem if they grew in the Land of Israel. תוספות ask that this should have been obvious since there is already a verse elsewhere interpreted to limit all מצוות related to gifts from produce to that which grew in Israel. Their answer is quite profound: ביכורים is not a function of the sanctity of the earth of Israel, but rather of Israel’s location on earth. The משנה in מסכת כלים lists ten levels of sanctity of various spaces within Israel, the last of which is the sanctity of ארץ ישראל itself. As evidence of that sanctity, the משנה lists the קרבן עומר brought on the second day of פסח, the שתי הלחם brought on שבועות, and ביכורים. The בעל הגדה’s decision to use מקרא ביכורים as the text for telling the story of the Exodus is an implicit attempt to draw a fundamental connection between יציאת מצרים and the Land of Israel.
The תורה itself draws such a connection in a פסוק in פרשת בהר in the context of שמיטה and sharing money and food with the poor:
אֲנִי ה׳ אֱלֹקֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר־הוֹצֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם לָתֵת לָכֶם אֶת־אֶרֶץ כְּנַעַן לִהְיוֹת לָכֶם לֵאלֹקִים.
I am Hashem your G-d who brought you out of the Land of Egypt to give you the Land of Canaan to be for you a G-d.
It sounds like there is a fundamental connection between our relationship with G-d and His bringing us from Egypt to Israel. This morning, in פרשת מצורע, we read about the impurity that a house contracts when a certain mold grows on its walls. However, the תורה specifically restricted this law to the context of the Promised Land:
כִּי תָבֹאוּ אֶל אֶרֶץ כְּנַעַן אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי נֹתֵן לָכֶם לַאֲחֻזָּה וְנָתַתִּי נֶגַע צָרַעַת בְּבֵית אֶרֶץ אֲחֻזַּתְכֶם׃
When you enter the land of Canaan that I give you as a possession, and I inflict an eruptive plague upon a house in the land you possess
The אבן עזרא says that the limitation of this type of צרעת to Israel is the result of Israel’s unique honor as the host of the בית המקדש. But it could also be that a home is only truly a home if it is in our national homeland, where we are free to truly express our national identity, our Yiddishkeit, and our relationship with הקב״ה. Similarly, we might have thought that the קרבן פסח should have no particular connection to ארץ ישראל. After all, the first two פסח offerings were brought in חוץ לארץ, the first in Egypt on the night of the Exodus and the second a year later in the Wilderness. And yet, the מכילתא points out that the תורה in פרשת שמות in פרק יב says that קרבן פסח לדורות, the פסח offering brought in all future generations, is supposed to be brought כי תבואו אל הארץ, when we arrive in the Land of Israel.
The קרבן פסח brought in the Wilderness was a one-time exception. תוספות in מסכת קידושין ask that another מדרש criticizes the Jewish People for the fact that after the קרבן פסח in the second year after the Exodus, brought at Sinai, they did not bring another קרבן פסח for 39 years, until right before Joshua led them in battle against Jericho. If the קרבן פסח was supposed to be limited to Israel, why does the מדרש criticize the Jewish People for not bringing one in the Wilderness? Answer תוס׳, the criticism is not for failing to bring the קרבן פסח in the Wilderness but rather for sinning with חטא העגל and delaying their entrance into Israel, when they were obligated to bring the קרבן פסח. Says Rav Rosensweig, what תוספות are trying to communicate is that something big was lost in not juxtaposing the Exodus with the entrance into the Land, that כניסת הארץ enhances and is linked to יציאת מצרים.
תוספות, in their דעת זקנים commentary, also point out that the obligation to bring the קרבן פסח started immediately upon crossing the Jordan River, unlike other מצוות connected to Israel, which didn’t take effect until the end of the conquest 14 years later. Rav Rosensweig explains that this is because the restriction of קרבן פסח to ארץ ישראל is not a function of Israel but rather of קרבן פסח. The קרבן פסח’s spiritual message is enhanced by our presence in our homeland, in ארץ ישראל.
The דעת זקנים explain that though we usually think of there being only four לשונות of גאולה, four steps of redemption, expressed in פרשת שמות, each represented by one of the four cups of wine at the סדר, there is actually a fifth, והבאתי אל הארץ, associate with bringing us into Israel. Say תוספות, just as a slave is not truly free unless they have somewhere to go when released from their chains, our חירות, as experience as בני חורין, as free people, depends on our having our national homeland in ארץ ישראל. That is why 400,000 acres of land were supposed to be set aside for the Black Americans emancipated during the Civil War, to give them not only wealth but a home, a place to be, to settle in peace. Unfortunately, that was a promise never fulfilled. But the choice of ארמי אובד אבי, which ends by thanking הקב״ה not only for freeing us from slavery but bringing us into Israel, reflects the critical role Israel plays in the Exodus story, that G-d did fulfill His promise to us in giving us a place on earth, our ancestral homeland.
Rabbi Lau could have used this to answer the Israeli pilot who questioned why the הגדה brings up השתא הכא לשנה הבאה בארעא דישראל השתא עבדי לשנה הבאה בני חורין, that it is part of the הגדה’s attempt to highlight the connection between our freedom from slavery and our presence in our homeland. It is an answer we acutely relate to now, as many of us feel our connection to Israel as Jews, even in the Diaspora, more than ever. But that is not the answer he gave. Instead, perhaps thinking back to his own experience as a survivor of Buchenwald and to the סדר his uncle led for the survivors in the tent camps outside Kiryat Motzkin, he criticized the officer. According to Noam Weissman, Rabbi Lau responded as follows:
“I used to learn from the great rabbinic luminaries, from Rabbi Eliahu Lopian and Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, and on Yom Kippur they would say, ‘Al het’ for 44 types of sins”“Do you really think that these great rabbis committed the worst sins?” Rabbi Lau asked the soldiers. “On the holiest day of the year, could these great rabbis lie? Of course not, but they said these words because they did not only think about themselves. They did not just think about ‘Ani, Ani, Ani.’ Like these great rabbis, we too need to think about others. We need to think about all the Jewish people and the entire world.”
Not everyone is free, not everyone is home. This Monday night, as the סדר begins, we will make קידוש and lean and act like free people. We will thank G-d for our freedom, for ארץ ישראל, for our families, for our safety, for all the good things we have. But we must also feel empathy, and describe ourselves as עבדי, as slaves, as הכא, here in exile. And we do that because some of us, particularly the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, are not בני חורין, are not in ארעא דישראל. May הקב״ה answer our תפילה and bring to fruition the complete return of all of כלל ישראל to our homeland, particularly those suffering in captivity, so that we can all celebrate our freedom together.
דורש לנפשי 