As an older couple, we had got to the stage of having a small Seder hosting those of our children who had one or two young children of their own. We also asked our rabbi to tell local people he knew would be alone that they’d be welcome to Seder with us. These were mainly elderly Russians; this was a few years after the massive Russian aliyah of the 1990s.
However, we’d come to know younger, single people from the former USSR, who we often hosted on Shabbat. and enjoyed the company of these twenty-something olim –Yevgeny, Milla, Larissa, Mikhail – for a few months, or a year or two, before they moved on to the next stage of their lives in Israel – studying, army service, perhaps getting married or moving to a different neighborhood or town.
One young Russian friend was Leonid, and naturally we asked him to join us for the Seder. The week before Pesach we began to count up how many we might be on Seder night. “We’ll be seven, not including the little ones,” I told my husband. The following night, the phone rang. “Yes, Leonid, of course your brother can come,” Eight, I mentally counted, “no big deal.”
The next day, the phone rang, Leonid again. My husband answered, I heard him inviting someone else: Leonid’s brother’s girlfriend. OK, so nine. During the next two days, Leonid’s parents and sister, who we’d never met, asked if they could join us; great.
After burning the chametz the morning of erev Pesach, we rushed back into the apartment, the phone ringing: Leonid’s brother’s girlfriend’s parents so much want to come to the Seder, their first ever. Wonderful: kol dichfin yaytay ve-yaychal (all those who are hungry, let them enter and eat).
And now: THE night, unlike any other. Everything was ready, we welcomed our guests, sat down, quite squashed up together, but it only made for more togetherness. There was a lot of smiling on every side, smiles being the common language that Seder night. We passed round the haggadot, began to read the – to us – familiar story, Leonid acting as translator for some of our guests.
Avadim hayenu – we were slaves in Egypt. I looked around the table, wondering what our new Russian friends were thinking, if they were recalling their time as Jews in the modern slavery of the oppressive, antisemitic USSR. And we cried out to the Lord. And He saw our sufferings. And the Lord brought us forth from Egypt.
The Children of Israel had cried out, in their oppression, direct to G-d. They did not depend on any other avenue to help them escape from their dire misery in Egypt, only on G-d. G-d showed that he had not forgotten His special people. For, as the Haggadah reminds us, “And G-d remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob… And G-d saw the Children of Israel….”
“And the Lord brought us forth from Egypt, “as is written in the Haggadah. Yes, He Himself. “Not through an angel, And not through a seraph, and not through a messenger. – only the Holy One, blessed is He.”
“B’chol dor va dor” – in every generation – we are commanded to regard the Exodus from Egypt as if we personally had experienced it. Further, in every generation, we know that only on G-d can we depend to help us escape from suffering and oppression.
We ate all the symbolic foods, Leonid explained their meaning, we sang Hallel and the special songs winding up the evening. Our guests thanked us with smiles and hugs, we wished each other chag sameach, Next Year in Jerusalem. Because of these guests, now bnei chorin – free people – in their own Land, I read the haggadah with new appreciation and understanding, each phrase taking on added significance.
It was the best possible start to Pesach; I think back to it each year afresh.
