In my family, we start every single Seder with my father telling the same story. My earliest recollections of family Seder start with these words:
A long time ago, in a time before books and a time before our written Seder, the Rabbis of our ancestors village would go to a specific spot in the forest and gather the entire community and together they would give God sacrifices. Each year they would recite the same prayer. Years later, memory faded and the Rabbis did not know the right kind of sacrifices to give, but they did know the place and prayer. Generations went by, memory faded yet again; the Rabbis did not know the right kind of sacrifice and the exact place in the forest, but they sill knew the prayer, and so they gathered the community together and as one they said the prayer. And so today, memory has faded. We do not know the sacrifice, we do not even know the location, and we do not remember the prayer said in the forest all those years ago, but we can still come together as one community and tell the story. The story of what happened long ago, the story of our ancestors, the story that is our legacy, and that is our responsibility today, to tell the story.
May each of you be blessed with the Seder table filled with the power and meaning of stories.
