Owning the Story: Thoughts on the Haggadah

Owning the Story
Thoughts on the Haggadah from Rabbi in Residence Scott Perlo

Why is it that we have fallen so in love with the spoken word?
In past days, rabbis only used to give drashot (sermons) twice a year during services. The first was on the Shabbat in between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, and the second was the Shabbat before Pesach. It’s called Shabbat haGadol - the Great Shabbat - and the rabbi would speak for hours (yes, hours) on precisely how to keep kosher for Pesach.

We speak much more than that today. The rabbi’s Shabbat drash has become a focal point of American Judaism,. For better or worse, a rabbi’s teaching in public is the sine qua non of our services.

It was a curious choice to make public speaking the primary way we give over Torah to our communities, and certainly not the easiest choice. Giving a good drash is hard, and not because of the fear of speaking in front of others - that’s mostly a matter of experience - but because it’s impossible to give any idea its due in so short a time, least of all the deep, complicated, not to mention contentious topics that Judaism brings up. Profundity on anything in fifteen minutes is tough. So why is the drash far and away our central teaching moment?

The intuitive power of drash is that it requires commitment from the one giving it, and I think that it is with this willingness to commit that we resonate so strongly. Drashot require that the darshan (that’s the speaker) identify with her words, own them, not step away in an attempt to distance herself from the sentiments expressed. The core of drash, no matter how complicated nor how erudite, is the statement, “This I believe.” When the darshan asks questions, they are his questions, the statements he makes belong to him.

This is why drash is an opportunity for courage, more than anything else. Rhetoric and intellect are not the core of speaking Torah; rather, its essence is the commitment to the words of Torah being given. And when the great ones, a Heschel, a King, a Gandhi, step forward to bravely pair themselves with words that we all desperately need, but only with difficulty can hear, we find that afterwards, for generations, the world is breathless in its awe.

This is the recognition of the Haggadah, which itself means “telling/recounting.” The Haggadah’s language is an unquestioned “We” - always in the first person: we were slaves in Egypt, God took us out with a strong hand and outstretched arm. This identification with the story is explicit: “in each and every generation a person is required to see herself as if she left Egypt.”

This fundamental “We” kills the distance between story and storyteller. It asks that we own the Exodus, that we become part of the story and that we let the story shape our identity. And the beauty of Haggadah is, in distinction to drash, that the commitment to join this narrative is asked of everyone around the table; a communal commitment, not just of the individual.

Even more than that, the Haggadah audaciously asks that we assume the obligations which devolve upon the free who were once slaves: gratitude for our liberation, an abhorrence for oppression that demands our action, devotion, and the consciousness that there is no essential difference between those who are free and those who are enslaved - everyone can be oppressed and everyone must be freed.

We should challenge ourselves to become part of this story, to gather the courage to commit to the words that we speak, to hear dissonance if what we say is not what we do (do the words, “all who are hungry, come and eat” grate on our ears?) Our story is one of great joy and deep obligation, one worth telling even, especially, with its hard parts. This story is who we are.

Hazak ve’ametz - have courage! and especially have
A Sweet Pesach,
Rabbi Scott Perlo