Each year, as Leil HaSeder approaches, we return not only to its laws and practices, but to its first principles. Pesach is the night on which the deepest truths of Jewish existence are restated and renewed: that Hashem is God, that Israel is His people, that He has given us a way of life rooted in justice and goodness, and that this way will ultimately prevail. These are not secondary themes of the Seder. They are its beating heart.
This year, however, they press upon us with special force.
In a time of war, when the Jewish people are again called to struggle, to sacrifice, and to confront evil on the stage of history, it becomes newly urgent to ask what gives a nation the strength to fight. What enables it to endure loss and uncertainty? What allows it to see war not merely as a contest of power, but as part of a larger moral drama?
The fundamentals of Leil HaSeder are also the fundamentals of Jewish war
It is here that a striking alignment comes into view. The fundamentals of Leil HaSeder are also the fundamentals of Jewish war.
This is no accident. The Jewish people are not called merely to survive. Our national mission is bound up with the task of upholding the good and eradicating evil. The truths implanted within us on the night of Pesach are therefore not only the foundations of covenantal life: they are also the foundations of national courage. They tell us who we are, what we stand for, and why despair is forbidden. For that reason, they lie at the heart both of the Seder and of the Jewish capacity to fight.
If one listens closely to the Torah’s account of Yetziat Mitzrayim, one can hear these principles emerging with particular clarity. They are theological, moral, and historical at once. They define Jewish existence at its root. And they arise not only from the general arc of our redemption, but from the explicit statements of Moshe Rabbeinu in the three great warnings he gives Pharaoh before the plagues of blood, wild animals, and hail.
Three Great Foundations
The plagues are not presented as a random succession of punishments. They are ordered, deliberate, and deeply instructive. This structure is reflected in the famous mnemonic of Rabbi Yehuda: דצ״ך עד״ש באח״ב. The plagues are divided into three groups, and in each group the first plague is introduced by a major warning (the second in each group has a less emphatic warning, while the third/fourth in each group has no warning). These are the warnings before dam, arov, and barad. Each reveals a deeper layer of the Exodus.
Before the plague of blood, Moshe declares: “Be-zot teida ki ani Hashem”—“Through this you shall know that I am Hashem.” This is the first and most basic principle. The redemption begins with the assertion that there is a God. More precisely, there is a God who enters history, remembers His covenant, reveals Himself to man, and acts within the world—and that God is Hashem. The point is not merely that Pharaoh will be humbled, nor only that Egypt will be struck. The point is that the world is not ownerless. Jewish existence begins with this elemental truth: Ani Hashem. There is a Creator, there is a Master of history, and He has bound His Name to Israel. The opening of the Aseret HaDibrot begins here: Anochi Hashem Elokecha asher hotzeiticha me’eretz Mitzrayim. The Jewish people do not emerge from Egypt into a void. They are born into covenant.
But this is only the beginning. Before the plague of wild animals, Moshe’s language deepens: “Lema’an teida ki ani Hashem be-kerev ha’aretz”—“So that you shall know that I am Hashem in the midst of the land.” The Torah now moves beyond the bare fact of divine existence. Hashem is not a distant deity, enthroned above the world and untouched by it. He is present within the land—within human life, within society, within the realm of power and conduct. He lays claim not only to worship, but to the shape of life itself.
Israel is taken out of Egypt not simply to escape Pharaoh, but to become a people ordered by the service of Hashem, a people charged with bearing a moral vision into the world.
This is the great biblical idea of derech Hashem. Avraham is chosen not only because he knows God, but because he will command his children after him “ve-shamru derech Hashem la’asot tzedakah u-mishpat.” To know Hashem is to walk in His way, and His way is not arbitrary. It is a life of justice, righteousness, compassion, holiness, and truth. The redemption from Egypt, then, is not merely liberation from oppression. It is liberation into obligation. Israel is taken out of Egypt not simply to escape Pharaoh, but to become a people ordered by the service of Hashem, a people charged with bearing a moral vision into the world.
Then comes the third warning, before the plague of hail: “Ba’avur teida ki ein kamoni be-chol ha’aretz”—“So that you shall know that there is none like Me in all the earth.” If the first principle teaches that Hashem is, and the second that He defines a way of life within the world, the third teaches that no rival force can ultimately prevail against Him. His way is not only true. It is victorious.
This is the hardest truth of all. The world does not always make it easy to believe. Evil is often powerful, sometimes dazzlingly so. History contains defeat, devastation, humiliation, and grief. One can believe in God and still wonder whether goodness truly prevails. One can affirm justice and yet doubt whether justice can win.
The answer of Yetziat Mitzrayim is that it can, and that it will. Not always at once. Not without suffering. Not without confusion, fear, and long nights of waiting. But evil does not have the final word. Ein kamoni be-chol ha’aretz means that no power in the world can arrest the destiny of the good. The path of Hashem is not futile. The Jewish people are called not only to believe in God, and not only to live by His way, but to trust that His way will prevail.
These, then, are the three foundations that emerge from the three great warnings: the existence of Hashem, the moral order He commands, and the ultimate triumph of His way.
The Seder as a Return to First Principles
Once this is seen, the structure of the Seder itself appears in a new light. The night is not merely a recollection of ancient wonders. It is a yearly return to first principles.
We begin with Kiddush, with sanctification and chosenness, with the declaration that Hashem has set us apart and entered into covenant with us. In the deepest sense, Pesach is the birthday of the Jewish people. Not only because we left Egypt then, but because in that moment we became a people—a collective bearer of mission, memory, and destiny. Israel is born on Pesach.
That is why the declaration of “Kol dichfin yeitei ve-yeichol” belongs precisely here. From a practical perspective, the invitation comes late; everyone is already seated. But the point is not logistical. It is formative. On this night we declare that we are one people. The poor, the lonely, the forgotten, the inconvenient—all are summoned inward. A nation is not constituted by sentiment alone, but by mutual belonging. The Seder does not only recall a collective birth. It reenacts it.
From there, the Haggadah moves to the second principle. Mitechilah ovdei avodah zarah hayu avoteinu (in the beginning, our ancestors were idolaters) is not merely a statement about theological error. In the Torah’s world, idolatry is bound up with moral distortion. The gods of the ancient world do not simply misdescribe divinity; they generate a world of power, transaction, manipulation, and cruelty. Egypt is called a beit avadim not only because the Israelites were enslaved there, but because slavery is the very negation of a relationship. In such a world there is no true brotherhood, no covenantal fellowship, no enduring moral bond. One rules or is ruled.
Egypt is called a beit avadim not only because the Israelites were enslaved there, but because slavery is the very negation of a relationship. In such a world there is no true brotherhood, no covenantal fellowship, no enduring moral bond. One rules or is ruled.
Against this stands the service of Hashem. Not another mode of estrangement, but its opposite. The Torah’s social language—achicha, re’acha—speaks the grammar of fellowship. The God of Israel is not appeased through manipulation. He summons man into truth, responsibility, justice, and love. The move from avodah zarah to avodat Hashem is therefore not merely a change in religious address. It is a transformation in the very texture of life.
And throughout the Seder, the third principle sounds again and again. “Baruch shomer havtachato le-Yisrael.” The promise endures. “Ve-hi she-amdah la’avoteinu ve-lanu.” Through the long darkness of Jewish history, enemies arose and continue to arise, yet Israel remains. We do not always know how. We certainly do not always know why one generation is spared and another is not. But the Seder trains us to say, even through tears, that the God who called Israel into being remains faithful to His destiny.
The Seder thus returns us, year after year, to the same three truths first proclaimed in Egypt itself: that Hashem is, that His presence lays claim to the sphere of human conduct, and that His truth will prevail.
What a Nation Needs in Order to Fight
From here the transition to war becomes clear.
A nation does not fight on the strength of technique alone. It needs weapons, intelligence, discipline, and strategy. But before all these, it needs inward resources. And the inward resources it needs are precisely those that Pesach imparts.
First, a nation needs identity. If a people no longer knows who it is, it will not long endure suffering for the sake of its continued existence. The modern world tends to push identity downward, toward the radically individual. Ask a contemporary person, “Who are you?” and the answer will often begin and end with the self: my first name, my preferences, my story. Judaism begins elsewhere. First and foremost, I am part of Am Yisrael. My covenant with Hashem is not forged in private isolation. It is mediated through belonging to the people of Israel. Without that collective self, sacrifice becomes unintelligible. Why fight? Why risk one’s life? Why bear pain for something larger than oneself?
Ask a contemporary person, “Who are you?” and the answer will often begin and end with the self: my first name, my preferences, my story. Judaism begins elsewhere.
A people fights because it knows it is a people.
Yet identity alone is not enough. One may possess a powerful sense of collective self and still fight for something ignoble. War requires not only solidarity, but justification. A nation must know what it is defending, and why the burden it bears is meaningful rather than absurd.
This is where the second principle becomes decisive. Israel is not merely another tribe seeking safety and space. It bears a way of life. It stands, however imperfectly, for a world of tzedakah u-mishpat, for the service of Hashem against the degradations of idolatry, oppression, and cruelty. To say this is not to indulge fantasies of human purity, nor to deny the complexity of politics and history. It is simply to affirm that there are wars in which the moral stakes are real, and in which the Jewish people are called not only to survive, but to defend the good. The enemies of Israel are not hostile merely to a population. They are hostile to what Israel carries into history. That recognition confers moral seriousness on a nation. It turns endurance into a mission.
And then comes the third requirement: courage. Not recklessness, not intoxication with force, but courage. And courage cannot be sustained without hope. One cannot ask a nation to endure grief, fatigue, danger, and loss unless it believes that all this is not in vain. A people must know that the side for which it fights is not doomed at the deepest level. It must trust that even when battles are lost, the larger struggle is not surrendered. That is what the Seder gives: an optimism grounded in profound emunah. Not the promise that tomorrow will be easy, but the conviction that the good will win the day.
It is therefore no accident that the fundamentals of Pesach align with the fundamentals of fighting a Jewish war. Though we were not always able to realize it, the Jewish mission has always involved more than inward piety or private virtue. It belongs to the arena of history. It is bound up with the task of upholding the good, resisting evil, and refusing to concede the world to darkness. A people called to such a mission must know who it is, what it stands for, and why its struggle is not futile. That is what Pesach teaches.
The Korban Pesach and the Birth of Courage
This is why the Korban Pesach stands at the center of redemption.
The Jewish people could not leave Egypt without it. Had Hashem wished, He could have marked each Israelite privately and spared him without any public act (in a similar fashion to Yechezkel 9:4). But redemption required more than divine intervention. It required that Israel demonstrate readiness. Taking the lamb, the emblem of Egyptian worship, and setting it aside for sacrifice in full view of Egypt was an act of astonishing courage. It declared: we know who we are, we know whom we serve, and we know that Egypt’s gods are powerless before the God of Israel. The Korban Pesach was a public act of identity, allegiance, and confidence. Only a people that had internalized these truths could be redeemed.
The Korban Pesach was a public act of identity, allegiance, and confidence. Only a people that had internalized these truths could be redeemed.
In this sense, the blood on the doorposts did more than ward off destruction. It marked the creation of a new space. Within those bounded homes, Israel came into being as a nation capable of leaving slavery behind and walking toward its land. Redemption required not only escape, but the inward formation of a people ready for freedom.
Not every generation proved equal to that task.
The generation of the wilderness faltered at precisely this point. In the sin of the spies, they lost not military capacity but moral nerve. They saw the giants of the land and concluded that the good could not prevail before such power. The language of Tehillim (106) is devastating: “They despised the cherished land.” Why despise it? Because they no longer believed enough to fight for it. Their emunah had thinned: “They did not believe His word.” The three principles of the Exodus had not yet penetrated deeply enough into the heart.
The Korban Pesach, then, is more than a ritual of memory. It is the inaugural act of Jewish courage. It is the moment at which a slave people becomes capable of confronting evil, because it knows that Hashem is real, that His way is true, and that His truth will prevail.
Rabbi Akiva and the Seder of Our Time
That failure in the wilderness casts a bright light on our own moment. Every year, the Seder returns us to the same threshold. It asks whether we are ready to pass these truths on to our children, not as abstractions, but as the living substance of Jewish existence. We are a people of Hashem. Our calling is to bear His way into the world. And that way, however fierce the contest, will prevail.
It is in this spirit that Rabbi Akiva becomes the fitting final image. Standing amid destruction, beside a ruined Temple from which a fox emerges, the sages weep and Rabbi Akiva laughs. He laughs not because he is blind to devastation, but because he sees it within a larger arc. If the prophecy of ruin has been fulfilled, then so too will be the prophecy of restoration. Even at the darkest moment, he refuses to surrender the third principle. History has not been abandoned. The night is real, but it is not final.
More than that, the consolation Rabbi Akiva invokes is not an abstract redemption detached from life. It is Jerusalem restored to human fullness: old men and old women sitting in its streets, boys and girls playing there. That vision is no longer distant from us. It stands outside the window. We are living in an age in which Rabbi Akiva’s prophecy has reentered visible history. Not in completion, not without pain, not without unfinished struggle, but unmistakably, palpably, before our eyes.
That realization should not lull us into passivity. It should summon us to responsibility. The children of Israel in Egypt had to take the lamb in their hands and declare themselves ready. We too are called to step forward—to act, to sacrifice, to take our place in the drama of Jewish history. Many have already done so, leaving comfort behind, coming to Israel, binding their fate to that of the Jewish people. But the task is not finished. History has opened again, and it asks something of us.
We are bequeathing the inner conditions of redemption itself: the knowledge that we are Hashem’s people, the commitment to His way, and the faith that His light will yet prevail over every darkness
That is why Leil HaSeder matters so profoundly in a time of war. It is the night on which a people remembers how not to despair. It is the night on which Jewish identity is renewed, Jewish purpose clarified, and Jewish courage restored. We sit with our children and tell an ancient story. Yet in truth, we are doing something more demanding. We are bequeathing the inner conditions of redemption itself: the knowledge that we are Hashem’s people, the commitment to His way, and the faith that His light will yet prevail over every darkness.
For this year especially, that inheritance cannot remain theoretical. A people at war must draw on its deepest truths. And the deepest truths of Pesach are not ancillary to that struggle. They are what make it possible. The night of the Seder teaches Israel that it does not stand alone, that its cause is not empty, and that the good for which it fights is stronger than the forces arrayed against it.
In that sense, the story of Seder Night is not only the memory of a past redemption. It is anything but. It is the enduring school of Jewish victory.
