Yehuda Amichai
And what is the continuity of my life? I am like the one who left Egypt.
The Red Sea is split in two and I cross on dry ground.
With two walls of water- on my right and on my left.
Behind me- Pharaoh's soldiers and horseman.
Before me- the wilderness.
And perhaps, the Promised Land
This is the continuity of my life.
Elie Wiesel commentary - A Passover Haggadah
"In every generation, every individual must feel as if s/he personally had come out of Egypt."...
Two comments: First, the text does not say that every Jew must feel as if he had come out of Egypt. It says "every individual." And here we find the universal dimension of Jewish experience. After all, though the Torah was given to our people, have we not shared it with every other people? Second, the text days that every one of us must consider himself "as if" he had come out of Egypt. No, I did not leave Egypt, but I must think "as if" I had been among those who did. Certain Talmudic legends explain that actually our souls were there. Or we may accept the literal interpretation and say: Though I have not personally taken part in those events, I must live "as if" I had. This lesson is especially relevant for those of our contemporaries who declare that all of us "are survivors of the Holocaust." No, all of us are not. Only those who went through the agony of Night survived that Night. Only those who knew death in Auschwitz survived Auschwitz. But all of us should think and act "as if" we had all been there.
Rabbi Aharon Davids (from Rotterdam, Netherlands) in the Bergen Belsen concentration camp in 1944- when they came to blessing on the matzah- with no alternative to matzah, he held up a slice of bread and recited:
Avinu She'ba'shamayim, Our Father in heaven- You know that it is our desire to do your will and we wish to celebrate Pesach, to eat matzah and to observe the prohibition on Chametz. Yet that is what causes our hearts to ache, for the enslavement prevents us and our lives are in danger. So we prepare ourselves to perform the mitzvah of "Chai Bahem- You shall live by them" (Leviticus 18:5). "To live" by the laws and not die by them (Talmud Yoma 85a). We will listen to the Biblical warning: "Beware and guard your lives very much" (Deuteronomy 4:9). So we pray to you to keep us alive and to redeem us swiftly- so we may observe your laws and do your will and serve you with a complete integrity of the heart.
Amen answered the congregation (fellow camp prisoners) and ate the little bread they had.
He was murdered in the camps but his wife and daughter survived, making aliyah. The family recites this prayer at their Pesach seder every year still today. (Source- A Night to Remember, Zion)
A Soviet Sandwich
We held the Seder in a hurry, as in the time of Exodus from Egypt, since the camp authorities prohibited holding of a seder. Instead of maror, we ate slices of onions, and for Zeroa (shank bone), we used burnt soup cubes. We read from one Haggadah, the only copy we had, and when we reached Korech, we had nothing to put between the Matzot. Then Joseph Mendelevich said, "We do not need a symbol of our suffering. We have real suffering and we shall put that been the matzot."
Told by Shimon Grillius, a prisoner in a Soviet labor camp, whose crime was his desire to make aliyah. From Zion, A Different Night
Rabbi Joy Levitt (from A Night of Questions)
From darkness to light, from slavery to freedom, from winter to spring, and now from bitterness to sweetness. But with the light, there is still darkness in the world. With our freedom, there are still those who are enslaved. It is still winter for some, and life remains bitter for many throughout our world. Even in our own lives, we live within the tapestry of these contradictions. It is dark and it is light; we are trapped and we are liberated; we are cold and we are warm; we experience pain and joy, just as we have eaten the maror with the haroset, taking the bitter with the sweet. Through this act, we acknowledge the fullness of life, shaded by the gradations of experience; never black and white but a reflection of the full range of possibilities.
A long time ago, there was a great rabbi named Hillel. He thought being kind was the most important thing, even more than studying. He once said, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to others. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn." He had a special Passover tradition. Every Seder, he would make a sandwich out of matzah, a slice of the sacrificial lamb, and a bitter herb. Since Jews don't sacrifice lambs anymore, today we make the sandwich with matzah, charoset and a bitter herb. Why? It's kind of weird eating something bitter and sweet together at once, right? But eating this sandwich helps us feed all the complicated feelings of Passover at the same time. The bitter herbs remind us of the slavery of Egypt and of our sad memories. The matzah and Charoset remind us of the fact that we are free and of our sweet memories. We are not supposed to forget either one. (Source- The Kveller Haggadah: A Seder for Curious Kids and their Grownups)
Korech- Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
Korech meaning bound together is so called because we eat matzah and bitter herbs combined. In our time this is only an act of remembrance for the Holy Temple. Hillel used to combine the Paschal sacrifice, matzah and maror, and eat them together. For he strictly opined that the biblical commandment concerning the Paschal sacrifice must be fulfilled according to its precise wording: "with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it." (Numbers 9:11) Other sages of Hillel's generation maintained that if these components are all eaten during the same meal, the requirements of the commandment are fulfilled. Hillel himself deemed it necessary to meticulously follow the literal meaning of the verse.
Then the festive meal begins. The custom of Ashkenazi Jewry to begin the meal with hard-boiled eggs dipped in salt water interpreted as an allusion to mourning (the meal of comforting when an egg is given to the mourner), in order to remind us that our joy cannot be complete so long as the Temple remains unbuilt.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's Haggadah
Korech- No blessing is made since we have already made the blessings over the matzah and maror separately. The view that they should be eaten separately holds that they are each distinctive commands, neither of which should diminish or detract from the other. Matzah symbolizes freedom; maror represents slavery. They have different tastes. They are opposite experiences. They do not belong together. Hillel however thought otherwise and out of respect for his opinion we do as he did as well.
Perhaps, Hillel was reminding us of the Jewish experience of history. Within the bitterness of slavery, there was also the hope and promise of freedom. Within freedom, we are also commanded each year never to forget the taste of slavery, so that we should not take liberty for granted, nor forget those who are still afflicted.
All present should take a kazayit from the third whole matsa with a kazayit of marror, wrap them together and eat them while reclining and without saying a blessing. Before he eats it, he should say:
In memory of the Temple according to Hillel. This is what Hillel would do when the Temple existed:
He would wrap the matsa and marror and eat them together, in order to fulfill what is stated, (Exodus 12:15): "You should eat it upon matsot and marrorim."
On Koreykh: Savoring Abundance in a Reality of Lack, Rabbi Aviva Richman, Hadar Institute
The step of the Seder called Koreykh is one of our more puzzling traditions. It may seem obscure or trivial, but it represents nothing less than the miracle that we have a Passover Seder at all, in light of the fact that we lack what was at its heart- the Passover sacrifice. In this vein, Koreykh represents much more than early rabbinic culinary traditions and the proto-sandwich. This "sandwich," missing its main contents, becomes a catalyst for a rabbinic approach to mitzvot that is singularly focused on finding abundance in lack and savoring the power of every mitzvah rather than being overwhelmed by chaos and loss.... We could have looked at the Hillel sandwich without the meat (me- perhaps the first Impossible burger?) of the Passover sacrifice and decided there is no "essential there" there and chucked the whole ritual. Instead, our rabbis see it as an opportunity to see abundance and strength, and to amplify the power of each and every mitzvah. We should savor the taste of each mitzvah so strongly we won't lose track of its taste even if it is mixed with others. And we cannot lose track of mitzvot that come our way even in the wake of many that are missing. I invite us to treat the HIllel sandwich as an opportunity to savor the unique power of every mitzvah we encounter.
Marbeh Lisaper on Pesach Haggadah, Maror 1:1
(1) Maror Korekh: Even if some disagreement or bitterness burns in his heart, let him ‘wrap up’ (hikhrikh) any hurts with love and let him judge all people favorably, as we learn in Masekhet Shabbat: “Our Rabbis taught: He who judges his neighbor in the scale of merit is himself judged favorably,” and elsewhere in the Talmud. The sages of blessed memory also quote the following verse: “Better to be forbearing than mighty; to have self control than to conquer a city.” There are those who remain calm even when their body is aching, a fire is burning in them and bitterness is dripping within them – such people are subject to terrible diseases. Others, however, remain completely calm and do not allow their hearts to become angry. This is a great quality – greater than conquering a city.
Erica Brown, Seder Talk
Maror- It is hard to imagine that we make a blessing on food that most people dislike. One opinion in the Talmud posits that you do not make a blessing on food that is repulsive to you. A horseradish root may just fit into that category... but since this is an evening of historic reenactment, the fact that you dislike what you are eating actually proves that the food did help you re-create the experience of bitterness.... For those who have the custom of adding a dab of Charoset on the maror we eat- bitterness is important because it clears the way for sweetness and intensifies it, but only if we do not let the bitter taste linger but wipe it away with that which can take it away. There are so many people who live embittered, maror lives because they have been poisoned by anger. Irt educes them, making them immobile, paralyzing them from feeling happiness. Instead of merely tasting the maror, they live and breathe it. It goes into the mouth and gets inhaled by the nose and it then constantly exhaled int he language they use to describe their lives. Hizkuni, the 13th centuryTorah commentator, explains based on a Midrash that when Jacob described his life retrospectively to Pharaoh, he said, "Few and bitter have been the years of my life." (Gen. 47:9) As a consequence of not being able to see the many ways in which his life was redeemed, according to Hizkuni, his years were reduced by the exact number of words he uttered in his brief life report. In other words, when you become bitter you shorten your years, if not in duration then in quality. Make sure your maror has a little charoset because a spoonful of sugar really does help the medicine go down.
Think of a bittersweet moment, Break down the bitter and sweet components of it.
What is one sweet thing you can do to break down some bitterness in your life (or your neighbor's life) right now?