Passover’s Three Essential Ideas

The Passover Seder is one of the most extraordinary educational events of the Jewish year. We tell the story of the Exodus, elaborate upon it, discuss and debate it and sing about it, trying to relive some of the experience through food, drink and actions. What are the major lessons that we should be taking with us?

For many people the lesson is the importance of freedom, for others the Seder teaches of God’s involvement in the world, and for others the Seder is the symbol of Jewish continuity and survival against all odds. All these lessons are correct, but if we could only take three ideas from the Seder, what would they be?

The Haggadah itself explicitly answers this question: Rabban Gamliel would say: “Anyone who does not mention these three things on Passover has not fulfilled his obligation, and they are: Pesach (the Passover offering of a lamb); Matzah (unleavened bread); and Maror (bitter herbs).

These are the three central elements of the Passover Seder. What do they represent and how do they embody Passover’s most important ideas?

The Passover Offering

The Passover offering consisted of a lamb that the Jews in Egypt sacrificed to God before the Exodus. Consider the profound courage this required. The Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt for centuries, influenced by Egyptian superstitions and idolatry. One of the Egyptian gods, Khnum, is depicted in Egyptian art with the head of a ram and the body of a human. Imagine the bravery it took for the Jewish people to take this sacred symbol of their oppressors, roast it openly on a spit, and make it clear to all that they were consuming a lamb.

Imagine the bravery it took for the Jewish people to take this sacred symbol of their oppressors, kill it and consume it.

God commanded them to do this to break free from their slave mentality and to shatter their ideological subjugation to Egyptian beliefs. For us, the lesson of the Passover offering is one of pride and confidence in our faith, in monotheism, and in Judaism as a whole.

The 16th-century Arba Turim’s first paragraph states that every Jew must be “as audacious as a leopard.” The Code of Jewish Law explains this to mean that a Jew should not be ashamed when doing what is right, regardless of the opinions of others. According to Jewish law, the Passover offering must be consumed collectively, encouraging the gathering of family, neighbors, friends, and all participants in the celebration. A vital aspect of the pride we feel is our deep connection to the Jewish people—our shared history and collective destiny.

Thus, the Passover offering inherently embodies an essential communal element. This offering is called Pesach, or Passover. God “saw” the Jews courage, faith and pride, and He “passed over” their homes, saving them and preserving them for the Exodus.

Matzah: The Bread of Affliction

Matzah stands in contrast to the lesson of the Passover offering. While the Passover offering teaches pride, matzah teaches humility. Matzah is the bread of affliction, the simple sustenance of the enslaved. It is the bread the Jewish people took with them as provisions when they left Egypt for the desert.

Matzah is stark in its simplicity—just flour and water, without the luxury of leavening. It is flat, unembellished, and unpretentious, teaching us that whatever we have achieved as individuals or as a nation is not solely our doing; rather, it is the result of the talents, opportunities, and circumstances that God has granted us.

It wasn’t our ingenuity, planning or strategy that obtained our freedom. God took us out of Egypt.

We rushed out of Egypt and did not even prepare properly for the event. We didn’t “get out” of Egypt, or “escape”; God took us out of Egypt. It wasn’t our ingenuity, planning or strategy that obtained our freedom. This may be why Jewish law requires eating the matzah while leaning, in a relaxed fashion. We can be relaxed, because our salvation was out of our hands and performed for us by God. Even our posture while eating the matzah drives home the lesson of humility.

Maror: Bitterness and Blessings

Maror, the bitter herbs, show that meaningful achievement requires effort and perseverance. We suffered in Egypt, but we also grew there. We experienced oppression, but through that experience, we became a people who understood the pain of the stranger, so that we might treat outsiders with kindness and justice.

We were subjected to hard labor and exploitation, but we learned how wrong it is to take advantage of those who are weaker, poorer, or simply different. In the words of a famous song, “Yes, I’m wise, but its wisdom born of pain. Yes, I’ve paid the price, but look how much I’ve gained.”

Greatness is only achieved through struggle, effort, and overcoming of obstacles.

When we eat maror, we do not dwell on our suffering; we reflect on how our hardships gave rise to extraordinary blessings and qualities.

Centrality of Wine

A similar lesson can be drawn from wine. At the Seder, we are obligated to drink four cups of wine, interspersed through the Haggadah, and wine plays a vital role in virtually every major Jewish lifecycle event and holiday. At a circumcision, the mohel gives wine to the baby so that the first taste he experiences beyond his mother’s milk is wine. A wedding ceremony is performed over a cup of wine from which the bride and groom drink and the marriage is sanctified with blessings over wine. Every Shabbat and festival begins, ends, and is punctuated by blessings over wine.

Why wine?

Wine starts as simple grape juice—sweet and unassuming. But through the process of fermentation, it gains complexity, depth, and sophistication. Every person begins life as “grape juice,” sweet, cute and simple. Through the struggles of life, wrestling with issues and overcoming the “evil inclination” a person is transformed into a superior, sophisticated person, albeit, no longer cute, but now a good wine. When we have achieved a moment in life, when we experience the joy of accomplishment, or the arrival at a major station in life, we celebrate with wine. The transformation of grape juice to wine is the same idea as maror: greatness is only achieved through struggle, effort, and overcoming of obstacles.

Thus, the Passover Seder teaches us three fundamental lessons. The Passover offering instills in us pride and confidence in our beliefs and in our nation. Matzah reminds us of humility and the recognition that our achievements are gifts from God. And maror teaches us that true growth and greatness come only through perseverance and struggle, and that the product of that struggle is worthwhile and good.

These lessons, deeply embedded in the traditions of the Seder, remain as relevant today as they were in the time of the Exodus.

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