The Seder as Our National Origin Story

I grew up in Israel, the child of Holocaust survivors from Poland. Though my parents were raised in largely assimilated homes, they both carried vivid memories of Passover seders at their grandparents’ tables—tables steeped in tradition, storytelling, and a sense of Jewish identity. An identity that helped them cope with hate, hunger, and physical hardship in Siberia, as well as bullying and pressure to convert: my father, while serving as one of two Jewish cadets in the Polish Anders army, and my mother as the only Jewish girl in her high school in post-war Lublin.

For my father, who later became the head of Israel’s national mapping agency, the lessons of the seder were not abstract. As he negotiated border agreements for the State of Israel, he carried with him a quiet conviction formed at those childhood seder tables: that Jewish sovereignty was not just a matter of politics or lines on a map. It was a sacred trust, passed down through story, memory, and identity.

Today, my mother’s brother Joe in Los Angeles is the last living family member of that generation. In recent years, celebrating the seder with him and his wonderful family felt like a direct line to the past, where you could get answers to questions about a world that no longer exists.

Rediscovering the Seder’s Purpose

For some, the Passover seder has become a kind of Jewish Thanksgiving—an annual family gathering with traditional foods, a quick reading of the Haggadah, and a few songs in between. Others rush through the text out of obligation, barely pausing to consider its deeper meaning.

But in a post–October 7th world, we can no longer afford to treat the seder as background noise. It’s time to return to its roots—which are also our roots as a nation. The seder is not just a ritual meal; it is the foundational story of the Jewish people. It tells how a group of slaves, descended from common ancestry, became a people. How memory became identity, and how that identity has been sustained across exile, persecution, and return.

A Ritual That Endures

Think about this: A 5th-century BCE papyrus from Elephantine, Egypt, shows that Jews have been celebrating Passover for 2,500 years. The origins of the Haggadah trace back to the time of the Mishnah in 2nd-century Israel. Through every exile, through every era, in every corner of the Jewish world, the seder has continued.

When my parents sat at their first seder in Israel after the Holocaust, they were participating in the same ritual their ancestors had practiced for millennia. Similar words and similar foods separated by space and time. And when we say “Next year in Jerusalem,” it’s not just tradition—it’s a declaration of return to who we are.

This longing for return—to sovereignty, continuity, and rootedness—was not only spiritual. It was also practical. And it was universally acknowledged. In 1922, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire—which had ruled the Middle East for 400 years and sided with Germany in World War I—the League of Nations unanimously affirmed “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

That word—reconstituting—is important. It recognized that the Jewish people had a national home in the land of Israel long before the modern concept of nation-states emerged, and that their return was not a new creation, but one of restoration. What the world once recognized clearly, some seem to have forgotten today. But the seder has not. It reminds us that we didn’t just leave Egypt—we were heading toward Zion.

More Than Just Liberation

The Exodus isn’t just about freedom from bondage; it’s the moment when the Jewish people emerge into history, bound by a covenant and called toward a land of their own. Many liberation movements—from abolition to civil rights—rightly seek justice and equality. But the Exodus story goes further: it’s not only about ending oppression, but about beginning nationhood.

The seder invites us to step into the drama of becoming a people. It’s interactive for a reason: not just to remember our liberation, but to re-enact the moment we became bound to a common purpose, law, and land.

A People Carried by Words

As we’ve already seen, “Next year in Jerusalem” is more than tradition—it’s a declaration of return to who we are. And as the seder’s closing words, they express a timeless yearning for sovereignty, continuity, and home. That longing has echoed across generations: in the return from Babylon with Ezra and Nehemiah, in the Hasmonean century of independence, in the poetry of Yehuda Halevi, and in the words of Hatikvah.

As Amos Oz wrote in Jews and Words, Jewish continuity was sustained by a chain of texts, traditions, and storytelling—words passed from one generation to the next. Heinrich Graetz’s 19th-century History of the Jews captured Jewish life not only as a religion, but as a shared cultural identity. That same thread runs through Michael Reiner’s annotated proceedings of the First Zionist Congress, where Jews from across Europe, divided by language and geography, found they still shared a common story—retold from seder to seder, generation after generation.

The Haggadah Through the Lens of Peoplehood

When we look at the seder’s sections through this lens, we begin to see that the Haggadah isn’t just a collection of rituals and songs—it’s a blueprint for collective memory and identity. Here are a few key moments to consider:

The Four Questions
This isn’t just a child’s curiosity—it’s the spark of historical consciousness. By asking why tonight is different, the child draws attention to the unusual rituals of the meal. And in explaining those rituals, we begin to tell the larger national story: how a group of slaves became a people with memory, purpose, and a future.

Avadim Hayinu – We Were Slaves
This line is the emotional and narrative pivot of the seder. The text doesn’t say they were slaves—it says we were. This is where Jewish identity is passed down not through biology or belief, but through shared memory. By claiming that experience as our own, we take our place in the unfolding story of a people who remember in order to endure.

The Four Children
These archetypes reflect different relationships to collective identity: The wise child seeks full engagement with our national story. The wicked child distances themselves from the people. The simple child accepts belonging without complication. And the one who doesn’t know how to ask is waiting for an invitation. I’ve been each of these children at different points in my life. The seder challenges us to speak to all of them—in the language of peoplehood, memory, and belonging.

Maggid – The Storytelling Section
This is the heart of the seder—and the heart of nationhood. A people becomes a people when it tells its story across generations. The seder doesn’t just recount the Exodus; it re-performs it. We are sustained by the act of remembering together.

Dayenu
Often sung joyfully, this list is more than an ancient gratitude journal—it’s a nation-building poem. Each verse marks a stage of collective formation: from redemption to provision to covenant. It is a litany of progress that charts the path from servitude to sovereignty.

In Every Generation – B’chol Dor VaDor
“In every generation, they rise up to destroy us—but the Holy One, Blessed be He, saves us from their hands.”

This passage isn’t about divine intervention or victimhood—it’s about resilience. It invites us to reflect on our collective survival: from ancient exile to the Inquisition, from expulsions to forced conversions, from pogroms and the Holocaust to the horrors of October 7.

Each generation has faced those who tried to erase us—not only physically, but spiritually, culturally, and nationally. We remember these threats not to dwell in fear, but to strengthen our sense of continuity. This part of the seder is a chance to talk honestly about what each generation has faced—and what it means to still be telling this story, together.

My parents knew this truth intimately. When they built their new life in Israel, they weren’t just escaping the past—they were reclaiming their place in an ancient story of renewal.

One Unbroken Chain

One of the most powerful modern expressions of this unbroken chain appears in the opening paragraphs of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. In just a few lines, it captures the essence of Jewish continuity:

The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

It goes on to condense centuries of longing and resilience into a single paragraph:

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

The Declaration then affirms the modern return—not just in spirit, but in action:

Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses. Pioneers, defiant returnees, and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community controlling its own economy and culture… aspiring towards independent nationhood.

Consider reading some of the quotes at your Seder, and invite commentary. This is b’chol dor va’dor made real in our time. The seder reminds us that we are not only remembering our past—we are living its continuation.

The Wise Parent

Some parents have told me: “I’m not religious—I don’t connect to a text full of miracles.” The Haggadah anticipates skeptical children, but not skeptical parents. Today, that dynamic is often reversed. But here’s the thing: the seder doesn’t require belief—it invites belonging. Its power lies in shared story, not theology.

If you are a parent and have not hosted a seder before, consider starting this year. Choose a Haggadah with historical and contemporary references (like this one). Or create your own supplementary material using the list of resources I have compiled here.

Zion and Judaism: One Story, One People

Passover reminds us of a simple truth: Judaism and Zion are inseparable. Ritual, peoplehood, and the land of Israel are not separate threads—they’re woven into a single Jewish identity.

That connection runs deep. Our holidays follow the Hebrew calendar which coincides with the agricultural rhythms of the land of Israel—Passover marks spring and the beginning of the Omer; Sukkot and Shavuot mark the harvests. Hanukkah recalls the fight for Jewish sovereignty. Tisha B’Av mourns the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem.

We pray facing Jerusalem, invoke Zion in daily liturgy, and carry the hope of return in every Amidah. The Torah—its language, melody, and form—was born in the land of Israel, along with the Midrash, the Kabbalah, and much of the Talmud’s storytelling.

Each time we say “כי מציון תצא תורה”—“From Zion shall come forth Torah”—we affirm that bond. Zion is not a slogan. It is the source.

The seder reflects that truth. It’s not only spiritual—it’s national. It reenacts how a people became a people: bound to land, to law, and to purpose.

As my father understood while negotiating Israel’s borders, there is no Israel without Judaism. And as I’ve come to understand while living in America, there is no Judaism without Israel.

The seder reminds us: Judaism and Israel are not separate stories—they are chapters of the same unfolding journey.