Rabbi Daniel Siegel

?מה נשתנה הלילה הזה

Mah Nishtanah HaLaylah HaZeh?

Perhaps the most memorable words of the Haggadah and our Seder experience are:

Mah Nishtanah HaLaylah HaZeh – Why is this night different?

It is remarkable that the Mah Nishtanah passage was first recited in the Greco – Roman period, when Jews experienced enslavement (in varying degrees). While telling of their redemption from Egyptian slavery, surely they were also commenting upon their personal contemporary circumstances and expressing their community’s hoped – for deliverance.

Two questions of the Mah Nishtanah reflect practices of the Roman Symposium, often enjoyed by the nobility and betokening the custom of free men:

Usually, one does not dip food into condiments even once – yet we repeatedly do so, tonight.

We generally sit, or some may recline, when eating – tonight, however, we all recline.

These are actions of free men. Thus, at this “Festival of Freedom”, the Mishnah states:

“Even a poor person among the Jews will not eat (at the Seder) until he reclines”.

In thinking of the Mah Nishtanah and its intimations of freedom, the following Talmudic story is all the more remarkable.

Rav Nachman said to Daru, his slave:

“A slave who is freed by his master, who gives him gold and silver, what should he say to him?”

He (Daru) said to him: “He should thank and praise his master”.

Rav Nachman said to him:

If so, you have exempted us from saying the questions of Mah Nishtanah.

Rav Nachman immediately began to recite “We were slaves”.

“We were slaves” is the Haggadah passage following Mah Nishtanah.

What is this story telling us? Are we to understand that having asked this question of his slave, Daru, Rav Nachman then released him? If so, we could understand why there no longer was a need to ask why this night was different, with the hope that “next year we will be free”. For Daru is now free and together they immediately could say “we were slaves”.

A slave-owning Jew in 4^th Century Babylonia, while uncommon, was not unheard of. Being married to the daughter of the Exilarch, Rav Nachman lived lavishly.

Is this story, then, telling us that to truly celebrate the liberation of his ancestors and to work toward his own freedom, this Rabbi, could no longer enslave others?

Sadly, Rav Nachman, who is cited as saying” a slave is not worth the bread he eats”, did not grant Daru his freedom, and continued to retain his other slaves, as well.

We might say that, in some respects, Rav Nachman was a product of his time. Perhaps, he even considered himself as privileging Daru, who could not otherwise “pay his way”.

As Pesach draws near, let us remember Daru, even as we would Rav Nachman. The story of Daru persists in the various forms of modern day slavery in which many of us, unknowingly, play a part. Whether it be physical abuse or wage theft making for the products we buy or dangerous health and safety conditions making possible the services from which we benefit  – this Pesach, let us ask ourselves, and each other, the question, “How can it be different”?!