By Rabbi Yoni Birnbaum, Finchley United Synagogue
‘Go and study what Lavan the Aramean attempted to do to our father Ya’akov (Jacob)…’ One of the classic questions surrounding the Haggadah concerns this short introduction to its central section. The section details the Jewish people’s enslavement in Egypt and subsequent redemption. The direct relevance of Ya’akov’s persecution at the hand of Lavan (Ya’akov’s father in law) to the story of the Exodus seems difficult to understand.
However, the Vilna Gaon (d. 1797) sees a crucial insight in this section that sheds light on this point. His insight also serves both to illuminate a central theme of the Haggadah and to provide an inspirational message that remains relevant throughout history.
He explains that Ya’akov’s experience in Lavan’s house (see Bereishit chapters 27-32) served as a precedent for the difficult process that his descendants would later have to undergo in Egypt. Ya’akov arrived in Lavan’s house penniless, seeking refuge from the hands of Esav his brother. Throughout Ya’akov’s lengthy stay, Lavan repeatedly demonstrated his dishonesty and ambition to take advantage of Ya’akov whenever possible, as Ya’akov himself lamented when finally leaving Lavan in order to return to Cana’an.
Astonishingly though, it was specifically in this extremely negative environment that Ya’akov experienced tremendous success. It was there that he built the future of the Jewish people, emerging with a large and strong family along with substantial financial assets.
In many respects, the experience of the Jewish people in Egypt several generations later mirrored that of Ya’akov in Lavan’s house. They too faced the most negative and challenging of circumstances, designed by the Egyptians to destroy both Jewish national identity and physical growth as a nation. Yet, despite this, or perhaps because of this, on both counts they flourished. They retained a distinct identity, expressed in both dress and conduct. They also grew into a great nation numerically, as the verse (Shemot 1:12) says, ‘… as much as they [the Egyptians] would afflict them, so they [the Jews] would increase…’. At the actual time of the Exodus, remarkably, they even prospered in a material sense too, receiving valuable treasures from the Egyptians (Shemot 12:35-36).
As the Vilna Gaon’s insight notes, the enduring lesson of the experiences of both Ya’akov and the Jewish people, on an individual and national level respectively, is the ability of seemingly negative and challenging circumstances to actually provide the means to achieve greater things than would otherwise have been possible.
This explanation neatly unites Ya’akov’s experience with the Exodus and thereby explains the precise positioning of the reference to Ya’akov and Lavan in the Haggadah. The previous paragraph in the Haggadah (Vehi She’ameda) makes the moving statement, proven time and again throughout our history, that in every generation people rise up to destroy us, but G-d saves us from their hand. Our passage amplifies this statement, reassuring us that, beginning with Ya’akov at the dawn of our nation, through the Egyptian exile and until today, challenging times can provide us with great potential for growth and can gift us with tremendous inner strength and resilience.