Rabbi Jonathan Sacks's Haggadah

The seder service on Pesach is the oldest surviving ritual in the Western world, dating back some 3,300 years.Through the Haggadah more than a hundred generations of Jews have handed on their story to their children.Few texts have received more attention than the Haggadah. There are thousands of commentaries, and more are published each year. Anyone who contemplates adding to this number must ask not Why is this night different? But Why is this edition different? My answer is that I wrote this commentary because, amongst all the many I have read, I could not find one that explained in their full richness and scope the fundamental themes of the Pesach story: the Jewish concept of a free society, the role of memory in shaping Jewish identity, and the unique connection that exists in Judaism between spirituality and society, giving rise to what I have called elsewhere the politics of hope. Nor could I find a Haggada that told me in detail about the role of Pesach in shaping Jewish identity through the millennia, or its influence on Western thought as a whole.