In the beit midrash, the most profound ideas often appear in the smallest halachic details. While learning Hilchot Shabbat, one does not necessarily expect to encounter the essential meaning of the Pesach Seder, but that is what happened to me. In a picayune discussion of what kind of change to a food item might qualify as cooking on Shabbat, the gemara brings in a discussion from Pesach about what, if anything, can impact the mitzvah of eating the matzah. That discussion ends with the line “ba’inan ta’am matzah v’leika”—“we require the taste of matzah, and it is lacking.” You cannot alter the matzah (dip it, soak it, dissolve it) because the mitzvah requires tasting it as it is. The taste of the matzah is necessary to see yourself as if you personally were freed from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. Matzah is a liminal food that is known as lechem oni, the poor man’s bread, and is also a representation of freedom since it was made and eaten on the journey out of slavery to freedom.

Chazal require us to engage our senses throughout the seder experience in order that we feel as if we ourselves left Egypt. When Moshe is giving the people their charge in Deuteronomy, he says:

You shall say to your children, “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and God freed us from Egypt with a mighty hand. God wrought before our eyes marvelous and destructive signs and portents in Egypt—against Pharaoh and all his household—and freed us from there, in order to take us and give us the land promised on oath to our fathers. Then the Eternal commanded us to observe all these laws, to revere the Eternal our God, for our lasting good and for our survival, as is now the case” (Deuteronomy 6:21-24).

When Moshe is speaking at this point in Deuteronomy, he is speaking to a group of people who did not personally experience the redemption. Yet he is directing those people to respond to their children’s questions in the future in a personal voice. “We were slaves…GOD freed us…” This language leads to the creation of the seder as an immersive reenactment. In every generation we must see ourselves as having personally been freed from slavery. 

Later in Deuteronomy, the Torah says, “So that you remember the day you left Egypt every day of your life” (Deuteronomy 16:3). There is an inherent difference between remembering the Exodus from Egypt, which Jews are commanded to do every day, and retelling the story of the Exodus from Egypt, which Jews do specifically on the 15th of Nissan. Although the language in the verse is just as personal, “so that you remember the day you left Egypt,” we fulfill the commandment to remember simply by reciting specific verses about the Exodus. However, on seder night, we are required not just to remember but to re-experience.

In his article “The Passover seder service as a paradigm for informal Jewish education,” (infed.org) Daniel Rose, Director of Education at Koren Publishers, argues that the seder is a paradigm of informal education. Starting from the mandate of seeing yourself as having been personally redeemed, he explains, “this forms the educational philosophy for the night’s proceedings. The rituals and commandments and narrating of the story are all focused on a re-enactment and a re-experiencing of the original historical and spiritual event 4000 years ago.” The seder ritual is designed as experiential learning at its best. 

In Exodus, the verses speak about the celebration of Passover, saying “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying: It is because of this which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt” (Exodus 13:8). Mishna Pesachim 10:5 expands on this verse and says, “In each and every generation a person must view himself (lir’ot et atzmo) as though he personally left Egypt.” The Rambam’s Haggadah changes the Mishna’s charge. Relying on the verse from Deuteronomy, instead of the one from Exodus, the Rambam’s Haggadah says, “In every generation, a person is obligated to show himself (l’har’ot et atzmo) as if he had left Egypt: for He did not redeem only our ancestors, but even us as well, as it is written ‘And He brought us out from thence, that He might bring us in, to give us the land which He swore unto our fathers’” (Deuteronomy 6:23). The Rambam makes it clear that the physical experience of leaving Egypt is not the core point. Instead, it is the spiritual and psychological experience of redemption, which links us to previous generations. Just as we have to see ourselves as if we too received the Torah at Sinai alongside our ancestors, so too we must see ourselves as having been redeemed from slavery alongside our ancestors.

But how do you see yourself, in the Mishna’s framing, or show yourself, in Rambam’s framing, to have done something you did not physically do? To truly put ourselves in the experience, we must think and act differently during the ritual of the seder. We need to build a transformational experience.

If you have ever been to a seder, you know it is full of experiences that stimulate all of our senses. Our taste buds are awakened by the matzah, the maror, and the charoset. Our eyes see the seder plate on the table and read from the Haggadah, experiences that are distinct from any of the other chagim. Our ears hear the story of the Exodus from Egypt, and the words and tunes of Hallel in praise of God. 

In the times of the Beit HaMikdash, our noses would have smelled the re’ach nichoach, the distinctive scent, of the Korban Pesach. I imagine that all of Jerusalem would smell like a fabulous barbeque by the time the seder came along. Following the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, every seder might have its own smells based on the cuisine of those present. Each year, my nose comes alive with searing pain after I have swallowed slices of fresh horseradish when we reach the maror. 

Our hands and bodies also have special roles during the seder. During Maggid, each participant takes a finger and dips it in their wine glass for each of the plagues that God brought against the Egyptians. This is a ritualized action to connect the people around the seder table to the people who were slaves in Egypt, a reminder of how as slaves we saw the plagues rain down and to recall the pain of the Egyptians. 

Throughout the seder, we change the position of our entire bodies. Each participant is directed to recline at the seder. Reclining is a physical action that changes which parts of the chair you feel and also changes how you feel about yourself in the space. Rav Ezra Bick of Yeshivat Har Etzion points out in “The Meaning of the Seder Experience” (etzion.org.il) that the mitzvah of reclining allows us to mirror what it is like to be part of the aristocracy, which allows us to personify and embody freedom. He says: 

The mitzvah of reclining is based on a halakhic criterion that on Pesach one should exemplify aristocracy, all of us together. There is a phrase—and this is a halakhic legal one, not a rabbinic sermon: “All Israel are noblemen (‘bnai melakhim’).” If you told the story and acted out its implications, you can eat in fellowship a meal of celebration of freedom. 

Reclining may be the only action we are commanded to take during the seder to experience the freedom we achieve by the end of the night. Whereas other actions embody being slaves, the plagues, and the redemption from slavery, there is a difference between the slave running through the desert away from their taskmasters and people who are truly free. 

When we think of the foods we eat, the actions we take, and the words we recite at the seder, there are endless examples of how the ritual of the seder can create a sensory experience. Some families add costumes, whip each other with scallions, or even throw marshmallows at people who ask questions. All of these customs are in service of helping the participants embody the experience of going from slavery to freedom, the project of the seder that began all the way back with the rabbis of the Gemara.

Many of the elements of the seder that have us reenact some part of the Exodus focus on the slavery or exodus portions of the “slavery to freedom” theme of the evening. Besides reclining in the way of nobility or as freemen, what rituals do we have at the seder to embody the freedom of the night? At the very end of The Seder Night (Ktav, 2014), Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon explains that “our freedom is expressed in that we do God’s will in the world…A truly free person is not one who does whatever he wishes. A truly free person subjugates himself to the wishes of God.” There are few ritualized embodiments of freedom at the seder because they would be superfluous. The seder itself and the ability to perform it at all is the actual embodiment of freedom.

Why is this night different from all other nights? The core of the Haggadah answers this question—because this is the night I embody freedom since God took ME out of slavery in Egypt! The seder on the 15th of Nissan itself is the embodiment of freedom, since I am following God’s commandment and not man’s commandment. May we go into Pesach this year with a renewed vigor to put ourselves into the sandals of those who were slaves AND may we reorient our thinking about the myriad ways that we walk alongside God in this world as an experience of freedom.