WHO BEARS THE WITNESS?

Earlier this month, Harry Olmer died at the age of 98. He was a survivor of the unimaginable brutality of the Nazi death camps, and dedicated decades of his life to Holocaust education. With his passing, we have lost another of the few remaining eyewitnesses to the evil that was perpetrated.

Despite the vast archive of documents, photographs and film, there is nothing as immediate – and nothing as morally compelling – as hearing first-hand testimony from someone who was there.

That truth goes to the heart of how Judaism understands memory. And it goes to the heart of the celebration of Pesach.

The book we will use at the Seder isn’t a siddur or a machzor. It’s called the Haggadah. Its name comes from this week’s parashah: “Vehigadta levincha bayom hahu lemor” – “On that day you must tell your child: ‘This is because of what the L-d did for me when I left Egypt’” (Shemot 13:8).

(One of my retirement projects is to collate the Pesach and Shabbat HaGadol sermons and lectures I have given over the years at St John’s Wood into a commentary on the Haggadah.)

Yet the book could easily have ended up with a different name.

Maimonides, in his laws of Chametz and Matzah (7:1), defines the central mitzvah of Seder night as mitzvat asei shel Torah lesaper – a positive commandment to tell the story of the miracles and wonders performed for our ancestors in Egypt.

On that basis, the book might reasonably have been called Sippur – Story telling. But it wasn’t. Instead, we call it the Haggadah. Why?

The late Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik explained that this was a most deliberate choice. The word Haggadah carries a precise and weighty meaning in the Talmud and comes from the drama of the Courtroom. When witnesses stand before a Beit Din and describe what they personally saw that act is called haggadat eidut – formal testimony. Not hearsay. Not tradition. Testimony given with gravity and responsibility.

By choosing this word, the Sages made a daring claim: that on the night of Pesach, we are not storytellers but witnesses.

That is why the Haggadah insists: Bechol dor vador — “In every generation, a person must see themselves as if they left Egypt.” Not our ancestors. Not our people long ago. Us. You and me. Everyone round the table.

For this reason, the Seder is not content with words alone. We eat the bread of affliction. We taste bitterness. We drink wine like free people. We recline, argue, question, and respond. These acts are not illustrations. They are enactments.

We are not remembering the Exodus. We are testifying to it. The Exodus did not happen to someone else. It happened to me.

So, the name of this book is Haggadah. What we hold in our hands is not just a story handed down through time, but testimony continually renewed. And the fact that Jews, year after year, are still giving that testimony thousands of years later, may be the most compelling evidence of all.