The Passover Seder, the Haggadah, the Four Questions – and one that is not asked: Where is Moses? Where is the man who, against his will, was forced to deliver God’s message to Pharaoh, “Let My people go”? Where is Moses in this “spectacular” that Jewish families produce year after year? Where is Moses who steps off the stage just as the curtain descends, never to see the finale? Why is Moses absent from our reenactment, even though he is the hero of the play?

Several answers have been suggested. Here are but a few:

• The miracle was performed by God Himself, without any intermediary.

• To prevent the deification of Moses, in reaction to Samaritan conceptions.

• The Haggadah draws upon rabbinic sources rather than the biblical narrative itself, and thus the absence of Moses is almost unintentional.

• In his commentary to the Haggadah, the Vilna Gaon expressed a negative view of Moses, taking the view that all praise must be reserved for “His glory and Himself.”

I do not find those answers convincing, and admittedly, the answer I will suggest may be no more so, but nevertheless…

The “star” of the Seder is tradition. Different people, different generations, pass on the tradition. More important than the content of the tradition, they convey the message of the importance of intergenerational traditions, of tradition transmitted from one generation to another through family, even in the most difficult times. This would appear to be a common phenomenon in various cultures. The transmission of family and national traditions can be accompanied by criticism, sometimes anger and even painful memories. And yet we find ourselves cuddling up to tradition at every level.

A Jew who sees the Oral Law as an integral part of his culture, sees himself as a link in a long chain, and does not wish to be the weak link that breaks the chain. It is with that perception that the Jew receives his national heritage from his parents and preceding generations. On this night of Passover, by means of the Seder which, more than anything, reflects this handing down of tradition, he passes on the tradition to his children and grandchildren, and so onward. In a world in which order and chaos are intertwined, the sense of belonging to a family and a nation impart some sense of personal and national stability.

No particular person is the hero of the evening. Each and every one of us is invited to be the agent of tradition, and thereby to be the hero of the evening and of the intergenerational event of the Seder. And each is invited to ask the traditional question: Why isn’t Moses the hero of the Haggadah, or at least a supporting member of the Seder cast?

I would like to conclude with a story I heard from Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. It is a story that has become part of our family tradition. My grandchildren have learned to tell it, and I repeat it to my students whenever an appropriate opportunity presents itself:

At the last Seder in the Warsaw Ghetto, Moishele sits with his father, the two last survivors of their family. Before asking the Four Questions, Moishele asks his father if he may ask an additional question, a Fifth Question. Moishele’s father answers: Ask the Four Questions in their order, and then add your own, and I hope I will have an answer. Moishele begins: Ma nishtana ha-layala ha-zeh mi-kol ha-leilot – How is this night different from all other nights … Finally, he reaches the fifth question: Dear father, will you be here next year to answer the questions? Tearfully, he tries to answer Moishele’s Fifth Question. “My dear son, I am sorry that I cannot promise that I will be here next year, and what is even harder for me is that I cannot promise that you will be here next year to ask the Four Questions…but…but I can promise you that somewhere in the world there will be a Moishele who will ask his father the Four Questions, because God promised His people that its “light shall never be extinguished.”

Passover is the Festival of Freedom, and we must each imagine that we participated in the Exodus. We are commanded “to leave Egypt” every moment of out lives. The Exodus from Egypt has come to represent the ability to free ourselves from the strictures that prevent us from expressing our selfhood.

Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote:

Nothing is as hard to suppress as the will to be a slave to one’s own pettiness. Gallantly, ceaselessly, quietly, man must fight for inner liberty. Inner liberty depends upon being exempt from domination of things as well as from domination of people. There are many who have acquired a high degree of political and social liberty, but only very few are not enslaved to things. This is our constant problem – how to live with people and remain independent.

In a moment of eternity, while the taste of redemption was still fresh to the former slaves, the people of Israel were given the Ten Words, the Ten Commandments. In its beginning and end, the Decalogue deals with the liberty of man. The first Word – I am the Lord, who brought thee out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage – reminds him that his outer liberty was given to him by God, and the tenth Word – Thou shalt not covet! – reminds him that he himself must achieve his inner liberty.
(Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, pp. 89-90)

1. Are we “petty”?

2. What is wrong with pettiness? Does pettiness imply that we are concerned with matters of no importance? On what basis does one decide that another person’s concerns are of no importance?

3. Is the desire to be involved with the “great” issues a form of escapism?

4. Why would one wish to be a slave to one’s own pettiness?

5. Doesn’t it make sense for a person to desire to belong to a framework that gives a sense of security in such a threatening world? What is wrong with surrendering a little liberty in order to be part of some framework?

6.  Why does Heschel speak of “inner liberty”? Does he wish to distinguish between “inner liberty” and “outer domination”? Can inner liberty and outer domination coexist? Can a person who enjoys inner liberty be subject to the outer domination of social and religious norms?

7. Are we dominated by things? Can it be otherwise? Does such domination also imply the loss of freedom of choice? Can a person freely choose to be dominated, or is that necessarily a contradiction? When a person chooses to participate in a “game,” does he not choose to be “dominated” by its rules?

8. Is it desirable to be liberated from the domination of society? Is it possible? Must we draw a distinction between “inner liberty” and “outer domination” in this regard as well?

9. Through the Exodus, God granted Israel “outer liberty,” but are we capable of achieving “inner liberty”? Doesn’t human history demonstrate the impossibility of achieving that ideal?