Falling for humans

 Please see my essay on the בְנֵי־הָאֱלֹהִים of Genesis 6 and the Fallen Angels.

A night of midrash

וְדוֹרֵשׁ מֵאֲרַמִּי אוֹבֵד אָבִי, עַד שֶׁיִּגְמֹר כֹּל הַפָּרָשָׁה כֻלָּהּ (משנה פסחים י׃ד)

He expounds on “An Aramean tried to destroy my father, etc.” until he concludes the entire section (Pesahim 10:4).

The core text of the Passover Haggadah, an exposition of four verses in Deuteronomy (26:5-8), is a midrashic tour de force that places the rabbinic method of biblical interpretation on full display. With their well-honed sensitivity to biblical expression, the rabbis draw out a narrative of the exodus from a terse chronology in a completely unrelated context. While we may accept the overall thrust of the Haggadah's interpretative style, we must also admit that some of its hermeneutical leaps are so fanciful as to test the very limits of midrash. 

The Haggadah certainly has little interest in the plain meaning of Scripture ("peshat"). The word "Haggadah" itself is an alternative form of "Aggadah," a method largely unconstrained by literal or contextual meaning (though subject to its own logic). 

Take, for example, the first verse from the Deuteronomy passage, translated literally: 

 אֲרַמִּי אֹבֵד אָבִי וַיֵּרֶד מִצְרַיְמָה וַיָּגר שָׁם בִּמְתֵי מְעָט וַיְהִי־שָׁם לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל עָצוּם וָרָב׃

My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation.

The rabbis read the verse differently. They assumed that the "Aramean" was Laban, rather than Jacob, and אוֹבֵד is a transitive verb, i.e., "(Laban) the Aramean tried to destroy my father (Jacob)." Taking this identification for granted, without the slightest effort to convince its readers, the Haggadah uses אֲרַמִּי אוֹבֵד אָבִי to show how Laban "sought to uproot the whole people," that is, to destroy Jacob and the nascent tribes of Israel.

As a straightforward reading, this interpretation strains credulity (see Ibn Ezra and Rashbam) and I suspect the rabbis themselves would acknowledge that "Aramean," taken literally, refers to Jacob rather than Laban. Yet they crafted this midrash, not to undermine the simple meaning of the text, but to drive home a theological-historical idea. The idea is stated explicitly in the Haggadah at the beginning of Maggid and repeated at its conclusion, by means of the catchphrase בְּכָל־דּוֹר וָדוֹר (in every generation): 

שֶׁלֹּא אֶחָד בִּלְבָד עָמַד עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּ, אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר עוֹמְדִים עָלֵינוּ לְכַלוֹתֵנוּ, וְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַצִּילֵנוּ מִיָּדָם.

It is not only one that has stood against us to destroy us, but rather in every generation, they stand against us to destroy us, but the Holy One, blessed be He, rescues us from their hand.

בְּכָל־דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת־עַצְמוֹ כְּאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרַיִם 

In every generation, one is obligated to see himself as if he left Egypt.

In short, persecution and redemption are perennial features of Jewish existence. Even before the Egyptian bondage, in a sign of things to come for generations, the nation's progenitor was threatened with annihilation.

By means of midrash, stretched to its elastic limit, the biblical account of bondage and redemption is transformed from a unique historical event into a metahistorical experience, to be reenacted at the Seder בְּכָל־דּוֹר וָדוֹר, even at times and in places where Jews are free and prosperous. Only midrash can impart this metahistorical truth.

An even more startling demonstration of the gap between peshat and derash in the Haggadah is its interpretation of the last verse in the Deuteronomy passage. Here again, the Haggadah utilizes midrash to make an unequivocal, even extreme, theological claim which departs dramatically from a simple reading of the Torah:

 וַיּוֹצִאֵנוּ ה' מִמִּצְרַיִם בְּיָד חֲזָקָה וּבִזְרֹעַ נְטוּיָה וּבְמֹרָא גָּדֹל וּבְאֹתוֹת וּבְמֹפְתִים׃

The Lord freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents.

The rabbis thought "the Lord" was superfluous -- from previous verses, we already know that God is the subject -- so they took it to exclude all other agents, human or divine. God himself took us out of Egypt, without intermediaries. The Haggadah states this explicitly and emphatically, underscoring the point with metronomic repetition: 

וַיּוֹצִאֵנוּ ה' מִמִּצְרַיִם. לֹא עַל־יְדֵי מַלְאָךְ, וְלֹא עַל־יְדֵי שָׂרָף, וְלֹא עַל־יְדֵי שָׁלִיחַ, אֶלָּא הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא בִּכְבוֹדוֹ וּבְעַצְמוֹ. שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: וְעָבַרְתִּי בְאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם בַּלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה, וְהִכֵּיתִי כָּל־בְּכוֹר בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מֵאָדָם וְעַד בְּהֵמָה, וּבְכָל אֱלֹהֵי מִצְרַיִם אֶעֱשֶׂה שְׁפָטִים. אֲנִי ה'.

"The Lord freed us from Egypt" - not through an angel and not through a seraph and not through a messenger, but directly by the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, as it is stated (Ex. 12:12); "And I will pass through the Land of Egypt on that night and I will smite every firstborn in the Land of Egypt, from men to animals; and with all the gods of Egypt, I will make judgments, I am the Lord." 

But is that what Exodus actually says? Were the Egyptian firstborn killed by God directly or by an angel of death? While some ambiguity lingers in the text, it seems clear enough from references to a "destroyer" (Ex. 12:13, 12:23), and from the blood-ritual meant to dissuade that destroyer from entering Israelite homes, that an angel or demon was at least somewhat involved. Shemot Rabba (17:5), for example, leaves the matter open for debate: וְעָבַר ה' לִנְגֹף אֶת מִצְרַיִם, יֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים עַל יְדֵי מַלְאָךְ וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא בְּעַצְמוֹ. 

But the Haggadah (and parallel midrashim) goes much further in claiming that the entire exodus was conducted by God without assistance. And this, we know, is far from the plain sense of Scripture. The evidence is in Scripture itself: In his message to the King of Edom, Moses himself says, "We cried to the Lord who heard our plea, sending a messenger (וַיִּשְׁלַח מַלְאָךְ) who freed us from Egypt." (Num. 20:16). Whether this "messenger" is human (Moses) or an archangel (perhaps Michael or Metatron) is beside the point -- there was, in fact, a messenger. The Haggadah's repetitious insistence that the exodus occurred לֹא עַל־יְדֵי מַלְאָךְ, וְלֹא עַל־יְדֵי שָׂרָף, וְלֹא עַל־יְדֵי שָׁלִיחַ directly negates the verse in Numbers, almost to the word. Note that a parallel version in some midrashim lacks the phrase וְלֹא עַל־יְדֵי שָׂרָף, making the negation even more obvious (see Haggadah Shel Pesah, ed. E.D. Goldschmidt, Jerusalem, 1948, p. 40; Jerusalem, 1960, pp. 44-45).  

Rather than a recitation of events, the Seder is meant to be an exercise in deep storytelling. An historical timeline could only scratch the experiential surface and could be better accomplished by a few key passages from Exodus. The four verses in Deuteronomy, by contrast, were deliberately chosen for their extreme brevity. They are a springboard for interpretation, best delivered by the deep readings of midrash.