How Far Does the Exodus Story Go?
How Far Does the Exodus Story Go?

The central commandment of the seder and the entire Passover holiday involves the telling of the miraculous story of the exodus from Egypt. The Sages elaborated on this dictum, weaving various themes and other elements throughout the haggadah, assuring the night is one defined as an experience in learning, not just regurgitating.

One of these methods involves the well-known format of “matchil begenut u’mesayem be’shevach”, the contrasting of shame and degradation in our initial state to the eventual exodus itself, culminating in praise to God. When delving into the structure and conceptualization of this principle, some truly fascinating ideas emerge.

The Mishnah tells us (Pesachim 116a):

He commences with shame and concludes with praise, and expounds from ‘a wandering aramean was my father’ until he completes the whole section.”

The Talmud then brings us to a well-known debate:

What is ‘with shame’? Rav said: ‘From the beginning our fathers were idolaters’; while Samuel said: ‘We were slaves.’”

To get a better sense of the facts, when we look at the text in the haggadah, we see the shame/praise dichotomies present in three places. The first is the initial answer given to the child’s question: “We were slaves to Pharaoh in the land of Egypt. And the Lord, our God, took us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched forearm”. Contained within this one sentence is the “shame” of slavery and the “praise” of the exodus.

The second place is later on in the magid section: “From the beginning, our fathers were idolaters. And now, the Place [of all] has brought us close to His worship”. Again, we see the “shame” in the fact we were idolaters, followed by the “praise” that we were brought to God to worship Him.

Finally, there is the extensive Sifre of “Arami oved avi…”, the aforementioned “wandering aramean”, which details the subjugation of the Jews and their suffering, culminating with the miracles and subsequent exodus. The evolution from “shame” to “praise” is quite evident.

Taking this debate as is, one sees two themes. There is the contrast of idolatry, the paradigm ideological distortion, with the worship of one God. As well, there is the difference of the physical bondage of the Jewish people with the miraculous exodus, their eventual freedom.

It would appear, when looking at the text of the haggadah, that the two opinions cited in the Talmud are combined. However, there is a fairly large divergence among the Rishonim when it comes to understanding the debate. The Rambam (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Chameitz U’Matza 7:4 ) writes that we must begin with shame and end with praise. How does one do this? First, he cites “From the beginning…”, and then he cites “We were slaves to Pharaoh…”, implying this should be the order. He adds that one expands the contrast of slavery to exodus in the section of “wandering aramean”; his language indicates that this is the natural exposition of the previous theme.

Yet, when we look at his version of the haggadah, the order is reversed. Why does the Rambam list it one way in the Mishneh Torah, but not follow through in his haggadah? There is something else that is strange as well, an overall issue with the structure of the haggadah as the Rambam saw it. We first begin with “We were slaves”, then, after some concepts related to the laws of the night, recite “From the beginning”. After this, we continue with the “wandering Aramean” section. In other words, the haggadah jumps from one theme to another and back again. Why this convoluted order?

Rabbi Yehuda ben Yakar (among others) offers a much different interpretation of this discussion. Rabbi Yehudah begins his explanation of the debate in the Talmud at the point when the answer of “We were slaves in Egypt” is delivered. He explains that Shmuel maintained the only theme that should be mentioned on this night is the theme of the exodus. There is no room whatsoever for any mention of our ideological origins.

On the other hand, Rav held that our ideological roots, and the subsequent evolution to worship of God, serve an important role in the telling of the story of the exodus.

According to Rabbi Yehuda, Rav uses the history of our forefathers as a compare/contrast to the story of the exodus. We analyze the development of monotheism, and God’s interaction with Avraham as he came to “discover” God, alongside the story of the exodus and God’s intervention to save the Jews. Rabbi Yehudah then reaches an inevitable conclusion. Rather than seeing the magid section combining (which would appear to be the normative way of learning) the two opinions cited in the Talmud, Rabbi Yehudah sees them co-existing, side-by-side, in the magid, as if there were two separate magid sections.

In Shmuel’s version, we begin with the shame/praise contrast, followed by elucidating the nature of the commandment to tell the story (mention of the four sons, etc.), and then end referencing the other commandments of the night (“when matza and maror are resting in front of you”). We then shift to Rav’s magid, beginning with the shame/praise contrast of our forefathers, then the further contrast of our bondage-exodus expressed in the Sifre, culminating in the commandments of the night as rendered by Raban Gamliel. In essence, when we read the haggadah, we are actually reading two completely separate magid sections, one followed by the other.

The argument between the Rambam and Rabbi Yehudah is not merely academic. In developing the idea underlying their two viewpoints of the debate in the Talmud, we see two fundamentally different approaches to the commandment of telling over the story of the exodus. Let’s first establish the structural difference between the two.

According to Rabbi Yehudah, the directive of contrasting must be the starting point for the magid section, the introduction that sets the tone for that which follows. Therefore, it is contained in the one statement. The Rambam, though, uses the concept of the shame/praise contrast as bookends to the magid section, with the “shame” at the beginning and “praise” at the end. The very format of the entire magid is one of dissimilarity, as we start the journey from the bottom and work our way to the ultimate praise of God.

This helps clarify how they view the formula of the contrast, but it does not answer the deeper question of the rationale for their two viewpoints of the debate in the Talmud. Of the two, Rabbi Yehuda’s conception of the argument is more difficult to understand. Why would he learn that Shmuel refuses to have any mention whatsoever of the ideological background of our people? At the same time, we need to understand the Rambam’s change in the order, as well as the skipping back and forth in the magid between the themes.

The one point that all sides must agree with is the necessity of mentioning the contrast of bondage to exodus; after all, this is the central commandment of the evening. It could be that, according to Rabbi Yehuda, the directive of the night is to focus solely on the story of the exodus, and not diverge from this main thread. One must see this event as unique in every possible way.

The debate in the Talmud, then, is whether comparing the exodus to something else takes away from the centrality of this objective. On the one hand, comparing the story of the exodus to the story of our forefathers functions as a secondary enhancement; on the other hand, it is not part of the actual slavery-to-freedom narrative. Therefore, according to Rabbi Yehuda, the two positions in the Talmud are exclusive, and are reflected in the haggadah in the two distinct magid sections.

The Rambam, though, sees our ideological roots as a necessary component of the telling of the story of the exodus. The mentioning of our religious history comes first in the listing of the law, as conceptually there is no greater contrast of shame-to-praise than our progression and exiting from the world of idolatry. The haggadah, though, is the guidebook of the story of the exodus, so we must begin from slavery. Thus, the Rambam maintains that referencing the contrast by our forefathers is a necessary component of the telling of the story of the exodus. We begin with our slavery, as that is the essential theme of the night.

Rather than continue to the explanation offered in the Sifre, we first stop and reference the progression from idolatry. Only then does the haggadah take us back into slavery, through the interpretations in the Sifre. Why? In order to emphasize that understanding who we were and what we became is essential to the story of the exodus itself, a seamless part of the narrative. If the Sifre were immediately after the mentioning of “when we were slaves”, the reference to our forefathers would be viewed as separate, rather than being a natural part of the story itself.

Ultimately, then, we see two possible views of the nature of the commandment to tell the story of the exodus. According to Rabbi Yehuda, the seder night has one sole objective: the story of the exodus. Our focus must be on this seminal event in our history. The only question is whether something secondary can be used as a tool to enhance this or not. The Rambam, though, sees the commandment in a more general light, a more inclusive conceptual narrative. Rather than view the exodus story in its historical context alone, the Rambam maintains that the exodus story encapsulates the narrative of the Jewish existence as a whole.

As a nation, we are defined by our avodat Hashem, our worship of God, and this is on full display throughout this important night.