In every generation (HDL reading)
IN EVERY GENERATION
The source of this brief essay is unknown to me. This passage was always read at the Seder by Herbert Lewis, reading from a photocopied sheet.
On this Seder night, we recall with anguish and with love our martyred brothers and sisters, the six million Jews of Europe who were destroyed at the hands of a tyrant more fiendish than Pharaoh. Their memory will never be forgotten. Their murderers will never be forgiven.
Trapped in ghettoes, caged in death camps, abandoned by an unseeing or uncaring world, Jews gave their lives in acts that sanctified God's name and the name of God's people Israel. Some rebelled against their tormentors, fighting with makeshift weapons, gathering the last remnants of their failing strength in peerless gestures of courage and defiance. Others went to their death with their faith in God miraculously unimpaired.
Unchecked, unchallenged evil ran rampant and devoured the holy innocents. But the light of the Six Million will never be extinguished. Their glow illuminates our path. And we will teach our children and our children's children to remember them with reverence and with pride.
We invite the souls of all who are missing, the souls of all who were snatched form our midst, to sit with us together at the Seder. This invitation as uttered by Seder celebrants in the Vila Ghetto in 1942... and we repeat it tonight. For on this night all Jews are united in history and in hope. We were all in Mitzrayim. We were all at Sinai. We were all in the hell the was the Holocaust. And we will all be present at the final redemption.
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