Yom Rishon shel Pesach

We read that a “mixed multitude” of people fled Egypt with the Israelites. With no time to wait, they took the cakes from their oven before they had time to rise. By God’s mighty hand, our ancestors fled the house of bondage and were brought to “a land flowing with milk and honey.” As a reminder of God’s redemption, we are instructed to eat only unleavened bread during Passover. Furthermore, the text tells us to explain to our children, “It is because of what God did for me when I went free from Egypt.” The Hebrew word for explain, v’higgadta, has the same root as Haggadah, the book from which we read on Passover. In doing so, each year we fulfill the sacred obligation to tell this story to our children. It is this story, more than any other that is central to Judaism. God redeemed us from slavery and we therefore know the heart of the stranger.