Klal Yisrael Is Always Free

The Nesivos begins his commentary on the Haggadah, Ma’aseh Nissim, with a question that has, unfortunately, recurred constantly throughout Jewish history: If a prisoner were freed from jail, would he celebrate the anniversary of his release in subsequent years if, in the meantime, he had been returned to an even crueler and more impregnable prison? And if not, why do we sit at our festive tables and invite guests to join us in celebrating the Seder, even though we are now sunk in a long galus?

Following the Rambam, the Nesivos argues that the opening paragraph of the Haggadah — Ha lachma anya — was only added after the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, when the Jewish People were in the Babylonian Exile, precisely to answer this question.

And the answer is that Hashem took us as His nation in front of the entire world, revealing His glory to an unprecedented extent. And He will rescue us from all subsequent exiles, whether we are deserving or not, in order that His Name not be desecrated. It is that assurance, which is a direct consequence of the great miracles Hashem performed on our behalf in Egypt, that we gather to celebrate.

AT NO TIME in our history did the Nesivos’s question present itself with such force as during the darkest days of the Holocaust. On my first visit to Poland last November, our superb guide, Rabbi Ilan Segal, shared numerous stories of Sedorim conducted under the most difficult conditions imaginable — during the final days of the Warsaw Ghetto, amid the last roundups in the Krakow Ghetto, and in the Mauthausen concentration camp.