On Passover: From Shame to Praise?

“He begins with shame and concludes with praise.” That is how the Mishnah describes the movement of the Haggadah, from shame – the shame of slavery and idolatry-- to praise – praising God for redeeming us from slavery and for providing us with a new religious structure.

From shame to praise. There is something unequal about this dichotomy. The opposite of shame is not praise, but pride. The Sefat Emet must have been picking up on this in his comment to this phrase: “He who wants to talk about shame, should shame himself, and he who wants to praise, should praise the Creator.” Shame and praise are indeed not on the same continuum. They have different subjects. The subject of shame is humanity. The subject of praise is God.

The movement of the Passover Haggadah, then, is not just a movement from slavery to freedom, from a humble state to an exalted one, from national shame to national pride. No, the movement is from one scheme, one way of thinking about things to a totally different one, from a human-centered perspective to a God-centered one.

Both shame and pride are problematic. They are two sides of the same coin – the coin that claims that it’s all about us and our egos, that we should reflect on our own worth based on what happens to us, how people treat us or even what we achieve in the world.

On Passover we declare a freedom from such self-referential thinking. It is not about shame or pride or any other ego-driven emotion. The point is to let go of self, of ego, and simply praise God – feel the smallness of our selves and the largeness of the world and the One who created it. Such a movement is indeed a movement from the constriction of Mitzrayim, the narrow straits of ego, to a broader space. Praise is nothing if not large. That is the feeling of the song of Dayenu – we well up with praise like fruit out of a cornucopia -- we are so blessed, so grateful -- there is no limit. This is the feeling we are working toward. We end the Seder with the prayer, Nishmat – the ultimate expression of limitless gratitude. “If our lips were full of song like the sea, . . . we could not express the full measure of our gratitude.”

From shame to praise. From self-reference to God-reference. From a constricted place to a broad place of open seas and flying eagles. May we be open to it.