Jeremy Rosen
Pesach: How to Understand the Haggadah
Summary
Rabbi Jeremy Rosent takes a close look at the text of the Haggadah and explores how we ought to make meaning of it.
Jeremy Rosen
Manchester-born Jeremy Rosen was educated at Cambridge University England and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has practiced as an orthodox rabbi, as principal of Carmel College in the UK, and as professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium. He has written and lectured extensively in the UK and the US, where he now resides and was the rabbi of the Persian-Jewish community in Manhattan.
Yes, I think that’s a good question. I think its relevance is to tell us that don’t think you’re so special. The pagan world was a pagan world that did not respect individuals, that believed in child sacrifice, something we have been freed from and we are proud that we are freed from, but we shouldn’t think that everybody is like that. Not everybody worships idols in the non-Jewish world, although in our day and age, what idols are is debatable. You might argue that social media is a form of idolatry, but nevertheless, it’s a way of saying, look, this is an issue of theology as well, of monotheism in contrast to idolatry. So don’t forget, that’s at the core of this.
Well, maybe Passover is, I have no, shall we say, scientific proof, but that doesn’t mean anything, ‘cause lots of things we have, we don’t have scientific proof or archaeological proof. So I honestly don’t know. And I’d go further and say I don’t think it matters. What matters is that this is a tradition that has developed and we believe is a spiritually inspired tradition with important moral messages, and the narratives reinforce these messages. The narratives are not there necessarily to be history but to make history.
Because as we break a glass at a wedding to remind us of the bad things that have happened or to remind us of the people who aren’t here to join us, so we like, at the Haggadah, also to recognize there’s another side to things , thank you.