Hagadah: freedom vs entitlement

Hagadah: freedom vs entitlement

The hagadah, the guide through the seder, an ancient ritual, emphasizes a concept that we translate as "freedom."   But the liberation, the emancipation that the Hagadah refers to, is not the contemporary  idea , a condition that is better called entitlement, the sense that a person may do whatever she likes, as long as it does not directly and obviously hurt another person.  Until the current generation, life was too hard imagine such a freedom. 

When the wicked child asks :" What does this mean to you", she is criticized for excluding himself from the community.  The phrasing of the question  reveals a problem with freedom.  It is wicked to interpret freedom as a gift to the individual; it is the hard-won legacy of those who joined together and sacrificed for the privilege of moving forward together. 

The hagadah is about the formation of that community and its continued progress, through hard times to better times. The community means members respecting and forgiving one another.  It means a constant re-interpretation of  the past to fit the needs  of the present and the future.  

At the very beginning of the seder we say: All who are hungry, come eat, all who need to Pesach, join us.  Pesach is a need.  The Torah describes it as the most  communal of rituals: If the family was too small to consume the lamb, others must be invited. 

 Pesach means to skip over.  To make the community, we all need to skip over things.

I need Pesach