The Passover Haggadah is perhaps the most popular Jewish liturgical book after the siddur. Each year families gather around their tables to retell the story of the Exodus of the nascent Jewish community from Egypt, using an ancient text made ever-relevant by each generation's added commentaries. Now the OU PRESS [small caps] has the honor of publishing Rabbi Norman Lamm s Haggadah commentary, a work of brilliant insights expressed in Rabbi Lamm s inimitable style, articulate and engaging, while sensitive and moving.



For this commentary, Rabbi Lamm s weekly sermons and divrei Torah delivered while he was Rabbi of The Jewish Center have been culled for his insights on the Haggadah and the Passover holiday. Together with relevant selections from his written works, they make up this new and compelling commentary on the Haggadah. We now have the opportunity on Passover evening to join Rabbi Lamm at his Royal Table and retell the story of the Exodus with new understanding and insight.

THE ROYAL TABLE

A Passover HaggadahBy Norman Lamm

OU PRESS

Copyright © 2010 Orthodox Union
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60280-139-4

Chapter One

Many reasons have been offered as to why the Sabbath before the holiday of Passover is known by the name Shabbat ha-Gadol, "the great Sabbath." One such reason is particularly significant. The author of the Tur, one of the greatest legal codes of Judaism, maintains that our Sabbath is known as Shabbat ha-Gadol, "le-fi she-na `aseh vo nes gadol because a great miracle was performed on that day." It was on this day of the year when the Jews were liberated from Egypt, that they summoned up the courage to take the lambs that were tied to their doorposts and slaughter them as sacrifices to Almighty God. This act outraged the Egyptians, for whom the lamb was a divinity. They were stunned by the effrontery of these miserable Hebrew slaves who dared, in the presence of their masters, to assert their own religious independence. And yet, the Egyptians could not and did not say a word in attempt to stop the Israelites. Because of this nes gadol, this great miracle, the Sabbath was called Shabbat ha-Gadol.

This is, indeed, a beautiful explanation. But there is something troubling about it. Granted that the silence of the Egyptians, their sudden paralysis, was a true miracle. But what makes this a "great" miracle? Why gadol? This was an era which saw the miracles of the Exodus from Egypt, the ten plagues, and the splitting of the Red Sea. Were these miracles not at least equally great? How does one measure the size or significance of miracles? The proposed answer can be most instructive: nes gadol refers not to the silence of the Egyptians, but to the miracle of Jewish character. What we celebrate is not a great miracle, but the miracle of greatness, and this refers not only to the courageous defiance exercised by the Jews in Egypt, but to an even more significant feat.

The other miracles of which we read and which we celebrate, allowed the Israelites to escape and survive, but in the process the Egyptian enemy was hurt, injured, or killed. The plagues caused a great deal of pain for the Egyptians, and the splitting of the Red Sea was followed by the drowning of the hordes of Pharaoh. This miracle, however, involved no injury to the enemy. The Jews grew and rose in stature, but no one was hurt. It was not the kind of bravado or courage that is expressed in doing violence to one's neighbor. Shabbat ha-Gadol celebrates nes gadol, the magic and the miracle of genuine greatness achieved by our people. This was real gadlut: greatness from within, not at someone else's expense.

The story is told of the great saint and sage, Rabbi Israel Salanter, who was walking in the street one day and encountered two boys who had been fighting with each other. The stronger had thrown the weaker into a ditch at the side of the road. "What is going on?" asked the rabbi. The stronger boy answered, "We had an argument as to which of us is taller. So I threw him into a ditch to prove to him that I am taller than he." "Foolish boy," replied the rabbi, "could you not have achieved the same purpose by standing on a chair rather than throwing him into a ditch?"

What the rabbi was teaching was a secret of true greatness: gadlut consists of achieving eminence without crushing another human being. And how rare is that quality of nes gadol, the miracle of greatness. Everyone wants to be great, but so few know the Jewish secret of greatness.

This is also true for the State of Israel, which also often finds that it suffers from over-politicization, with the partisanship of its political parties often exceeding all bounds. Political consciousness of the citizenry is good, but when each individual party - and this holds true for all of them - tries to gain in prestige and power at the expense of all others, by belittling and scandalizing others, then the state itself begins to suffer. It holds true for American Jewish organizations, where the progress of American Jewry is all too often stifled because of the unwillingness of the various organizations to unify or at least cooperate, not so much to protect their own autonomy as to make sure that the other organizations do not receive credit and power.

As individuals, Shabbat ha-Gadol reminds us that the way to greatness in business should never come by crushing competitors. In our professions we should not attempt to achieve prestige by hurting colleagues. The concept of nes gadol teaches each of us not only how to act but also how to think: In our innermost hearts we should measure our own success or failure not relative to our neighbors, but by absolute standards; we must, each of us, attempt to grow great by ourselves, not only by comparison to the smallness of others. But granted the negative aspect of this definition of gadlut or greatness, that it must not come at the expense of others, what is the positive or affirmative definition? What do we mean when we say that one must grow big by himself and through himself?

Perhaps the Talmud can help us here. Talmudic law is that if one finds an object which has no distinguishing marks and is unclaimed, he may keep it. If he is a child, the object belongs to his father or guardian. If he is an adult, then it belongs to himself. And yet, the Talmud maintains that whereas "child" and "adult" normally refer to chronology or physical development (i.e., before or after the age of thirteen), that definition does not hold true in this context. Katan with regard to finding an unclaimed object is not a question of age but a question of independence. A katan (minor) is one "ha-somekh 'al shulhan aviv o shulhan shel aherim, who, literally, relies or leans on the table of his father or on the table of others." A gadol (adult) is one who has his own table, who supports himself. I believe this is more than an economic definition in Jewish financial law. It is a lesson for all of life. To be a gadol means to be yourself, to draw upon your own spiritual resources, to live true to your own destiny and character. A spiritual katan will beg for crumbs from the tables of others; one who has achieved gadlut will repair to his own table, no matter how sparse the food may be.

In Egypt, throughout their servitude, our ancestors were in the category of those who "rely on the table of others." They had assimilated Egyptian life and values, Egyptian culture and religion. They had sunk to spiritual katnut, and this cannot be redeemed or healed by plagues or the splitting of seas or political independence. What was needed was nothing less than a miracle: the nes gadol, the miracle of genuine greatness by an act which affirms the spiritual self, a rallying to unique Jewish destiny and image and character, a courageous cutting of the cultural umbilical cord which tied the Jewish victims to their Egyptian persecutors. This was achieved through the slaughtering of the Egyptians gods and the rejection of the idolatry which until that time had been accepted by the Israelites as well. This was the miracle of Jewish greatness. No one else was hurt, and it was an act of spiritual independence.

This is a teaching which holds true universally. He who lives by leave of another, he who satisfies his cultural hunger by crumbs from strange tables, he who seeks esteem by alien standards - such a person is a katan. The abject conformist, the servile status-seeker -...