It’s for the children.
The Torah meticulously records the miraculous overturning of Nature and then – even before our ancient forebears began what turned out to be their 40-year march to the Promised Land – it instructs soon-to-be-freed slaves to impart the details of story of their liberation to their children.
“And when, in time to come, you children ask you, saying, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to them: “It was with a mighty hand that the Lord brought us out from Egypt, the House of Bondage.” (Exodus 13:14)
And so, in the unfolding years, our Sages designed the Pesach Seder to try to bring what happened some 3,400 years ago in Egypt – the freeing of the Hebrew slaves from horrific slavery – to the vivid imaginations of our children. In all generations and for all times. Indeed, the word Haggadah, the Seder manual as it were, derives from the command v’higgadita, meaning to instruct or teach (our children).
The late remarkable, wise Rabbi Reuven Bulka of Ottawa succinctly described the essence and the purpose of the Seder. “The Seder is a pedagogic experience, in which the next generation is given a sense of history by the present adult generation…. We relive the past to become infused with an appreciation of our history, what made us what we are … to energize us to continue the traditions of the past into the future.”
The exodus from Egypt is the defining moment of our history. It is the foundation stone of our peoplehood. We recount the miraculous departure from ancient Egypt each day, every day, in our prayers and in many of our ritual practices. It was the beginning of the process that forged us into a people with a mission to help make the world the human being-focused, socially responsible and caring place that God intended it to be.
The children must be taught – lovingly, each according to his or her abilities – the story of that defining moment and its everlasting purpose. Because, after all, in their own turn, it will be in their hearts to hold precious, then teach, and ensure the transmission of the memory of that moment to their children. They must feel deeply and without distrust, that the 3.400-year-old story is their story too, a source of identity, generating pride, and embedding strength, that it is the invisible, binding thread connecting us all to each other through waves of unending time.
This feeling in our children for inter-generational connection, to carry and protect our story, was very much in evidence during TannenbaumCHAT’s music night two weeks ago. With flair and emotion and open-hearted embrace of being Jewish, the singers sang Make Them Hear You, from the musical Ragtime, written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Charles Flaherty. Of course, the song was not written as a paean to Jewish peoplehood, or as a rallying cry summoning Jewish courage. But, as we – parents and grandparents – listened to and watched the singers perform, our hearts soared with gratitude and tingling sensation. We excerpt parts of the song.
“Go out and tell our story
Let it echo far and wide
Make them hear you
Make them hear you…
How justice was our battle
And how justice was denied
Make them hear you
Make them hear you….
Go out and tell our story to your daughters and your sons
Teach every child to raise his voice
And then my brothers, then
Will justice be demanded by ten million righteous men?
Make them hear you
When they hear you, I’ll be near you. Again”
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An electric suggestion, if not foreshadowing, of Pesach’s Seder pulsed in the air as the children sang. It was an exciting and emotionally affecting restatement of the message of the Seder against the dark backdrop of Israel’s war with Iran, and the increasing menace to Jewish life even here in the GTA.
Pesach begins this evening. It’s for the children to be sure. But it is also for us. For all the generations gathered around the table.
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Shabbat shalom
Chag Pesach samayach
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
April 1, 2026
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 