On the Seder night we are supposed to remember how it felt to be in Mitzrayim as if we had been slaves there. At the Pesach Seder we say that every person must see themselves as if they were leaving Egypt after being enslaved. We need to be able to feel all the pain, sorrow and joy of our ancestors and we can only do this by trying to put ourselves in their shoes. We have to think of our tough times to be able to sympathize with what they went through, the sorrow, the hope and the joy. The Haggadah is teaching us that in life we need to try to see events from the other person’s perspective.

The Haggadah teaches us how to put ourselves in the shoes of others. We can see the irony because had Yosef’s brothers put themselves in Yosef’s shoes, the Jews had the potential to not become slaves in Egypt. Had Yosef’s brothers saw what Yosef was going through, not having a mother and being so excited about being close to Hashem, they could have put their jealousy aside. They could have seen that Yosef only got attention from one parent even if it was much more than what they got, and that Yosef was just excited that he had a dream from God and he did not mean to rub anything in their faces. Sometimes we get so upset or are so fixated that someone can only act in a certain way that we lose sight of the truth or what is going on in the other person’s life. Listen to the Haggadah and put yourself in someone else’s shoes before judging them, and feel what they are going through by remembering your past, both sad and happy.

By Shira Sedek