Why the Seder Is the Oldest Classroom in Human History

Every year, we come to the same moment in the Haggadah.

We have eaten the matzah. We have drunk the wine. We have told the story. And then we read these words:

In every generation, they rise up to destroy us.

Is that paranoia? Is it trauma encoded in ritual?

What if, instead, it is the single most important thing we could teach our children right now?

Something is happening in our community that we need to name.

Our children are on the front lines of something we did not prepare them for. Through their phones, on their campuses, in their classrooms, they are encountering accusations that feel new but are, in fact, very old.

“Zionism is racism.” “Israel is apartheid.” “Jews are committing genocide.”

Criticizing Israel’s government is, of course, not antisemitic. It’s Israel’s national sport and it’s an important part of what it means to love Israel and to be a Zionist. That’s not what those phrases are for.

These accusations bombard our children. They are not meant to inspire moral reflection or make Israel more just; they are designed to make us feel shame. Confusion. Doubt. And for many of our kids, for many of us, it’s working.

One reason: We have not given our children a framework—a way to understand what they are experiencing. The Passover story has been trying to give us that framework for three thousand years.

The Torah shows us how lies take root: they often begin with a kernel of truth: The Children of Israel were fruitful and multiplied, swarming across the land, growing strong—exceedingly strong.

And yet Pharaoh saw that truth and twisted it. He turned their blessing into a threat, saying: We must act against them. The story he told about us was a lie.

So why in every generation, do they rise up to try to destroy us?

A useful place to start is a question posed by Dr. Dara Horn, who has spent years studying antisemitism: Why did monotheism matter?

We hear the words God is one and we think: that is a spiritual idea. A theological claim.

But in the ancient world, it was a political statement.

In ancient Egypt, in Rome, in every empire of the ancient world, the ruler and the god had a special relationship. The king derived his power from the divine. His authority was sacred. To challenge the ruler was to challenge god himself.

So when the Jewish people stood before Pharaoh and said: there is one God, and you are not him, they were making a radical claim. They were saying: your power is not ultimate. You are not divine. You cannot own us.

That is what the Exodus was. Not just liberation from slavery. It was the founding act of an anti-tyrannical movement.

The Passover story also teaches that societies can change. Pharaoh can fall. The seemingly impossible can happen. Slaves can be free. It is a liberation narrative.

Nor did Jews receive a ruler who tells us what to think. We received Torah, a system of law that invites questioning, interpretation, argument, and debate. The rabbis did not hand down truth from above. They argued about it. For centuries. The Talmud is a record of that argument. Dissent is not a betrayal of our tradition. Dissent is our tradition.

These ideas – one God above all rulers and human despots, societies can change, and questions are a source of wisdom – have shaped civilization. And they have made us, in every era, a perceived threat to those who need everyone to conform.

The accusation changes. The structure never does. Someone with power feels threatened. They identify what their society values most. Then they take a truth and create a lie and use it to say: the Jews are destroying us!

Jewish life after Gaza is a complicated moment. Tal Becker teaches, “[I]n the era of the blood libel, we were powerless and obviously innocent. Today, the accusations remain outrageous—but we are not entirely innocent either.” Judaism and Zionism call us from within to serious moral self-scrutiny, and to resistance to lies from without. Learning to see a lie for what it is doesn’t free us from honest moral reckoning; it helps us tell the difference between truth that calls us to grow and lies that would steal our story.

The seder may be the oldest classroom in human history. Every year for three millennia, Jewish families have gathered around a table to remember. To retell. To ask: what does this story mean for us right now?

We do this not because we are paranoid or perfect. But because we are the people who said, three thousand years ago, that no human ruler is God. And tyrants have never forgiven us for it.

Rabbi Daniel Greyber serves as the spiritual leader of Beth El Synagogue in Durham, North Carolina and is a Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.