Mark Gerson - The Telling: How Judaisms Essential Book Reveals the Meaning of Life

Around fifteen years ago, I made a discovery. It was not the kind of discovery that a treasure hunter or medical researcher would makewhere something presents in an instant and changes everything. It was more like the type of discovery described by the biblical Abraham in the book of Genesis. He had been married to Sarah for many years when, approaching Egypt to escape a famine, he declared, Now I know you are a beautiful woman!

It was the discovery of something that had always been there but had escaped notice. It was not a discovery that concluded a process. It was one that began a journey.

My discovery was of the Haggadah, the book of the Jewish holiday of Pesach.

Like Sarah to Abraham, the Haggadah and Pesach had long been with me. I had, for as long as I could remember (and probably before that), participated in Pesach Seders and read from the Haggadah. Seders were the highlight of the Jewish yearthe time when my family and friends gathered in a warm and welcoming environment to tell the story of the Jewish liberation from the Pharaohs Egypt by reading the Haggadah, participating in beloved rituals (especially finding the afikoman and reading the Four Questions), and eating the special foods unique to the holiday. This kind of experience partially explains why American Jews are far likelier to attend a Seder than to fast on Yom Kippur, light Shabbat candles, or marry another Jew.

These warm Pesach experiences prepared me for the discoverywhich occurred a few weeks before a Pesach in the early 2000s. My friend Jeff Ballabon asked me to get together with him for a cigar in Manhattan to study the Haggadah. I had studied Jewish ideas with Jeff a few times beforeso the prospect of enjoying a cigar and discussing a Jewish text with him was entirely welcome.

In that first session, we discussed one of the most familiar parts of the Pesach Sederthe Four Sons. Jeff, using a book by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, showed me how the very familiar passage of the wicked son contained both the diagnosis of how the son became that way and how he could be redeemed. Jeff and I kept studying, and I started to do so on my own as well. And it became apparent that the Haggadah had enormous reserves of life-changing wisdom just beneath the passages that were familiar to me and most other Jews.

At the Seder that year, I shared some of what I had learned with my fellow attendeesand the discussions that these insights sparked showed how interesting this material was to so many people. I was hooked. It was around this time, for reasons I cannot explain, that I developed an exercise addiction. I physically must start the day by running at least 4.5 miles. I began to watch and listen to Haggadah and Torah commentaries every day on the treadmilla process that takes a little longer each year. The more I learned, the more I realized how much more there was to learn and how much I wanted to study. I learned that the wisdom in the Haggadah is not only vast but literally infinite. I experienced how it teaches us how to think of lifes biggest questions, guide us in the most frequent and most practical situations, and so much in between. I saw how unearthing the Haggadahs lessons and teachings, embedded in the passages and rituals familiar to everyone who has attended Seders, is enjoyable, instructive, and actionableand also thrilling.

The only word that can adequately capture the relationship that I developed with the Haggadah is love. I wanted to share it. When I discussed what I was learning with both traditional and liberal Jews, I received the same reaction: genuine interest, even fascination, and always a desire to learn more.

I wanted to share this even more broadly. So in 2013, my wife (a rabbi) and I hosted our first Seder preparation session at our home in New York. The goal was for attendees to emerge with a few new ideas or discussion topics from the Haggadah that they would share at their Seders the following week. The apartment filled up, people took notes and stayed late with lots of questions and insightsand the reports came back a couple of weeks later that this night of learning made for the most meaningful discussions ever. I kept studying, and our Pesach preparation session became an annual event. Jews of all religious backgrounds, as well as interested gentiles, started coming. Within a few years, we were hosting multiple sessions a year in venues that could accommodate many more people than could our apartment.

After one of the sessions several years ago, one of the participants, Anna Phillips, came up to me and reminded me of something I had saidthat the Haggadah is not a holiday manual but the Greatest Hits of Jewish Thought. Consequently, Anna said, can we continue this kind of study throughout the year? My and Ericas answer: Absolutelywell study the weekly Torah portion (the parsha) every week like we do the Haggadah every year.

So our weekly sessions of two hours of text study every Saturday morning began. There are now dozens of people who attend online and offlineincluding Jews of all religious observance, gentiles, adults, and children. These sessions have been a complete joy in so many different respects, especially as participants (most of all me) have come to see that perhaps all of lifes consequential questions are asked and answered in the Torah. And I saw that the most important ideas that emanated from Torah study invariably tie back to a Haggadah passage, confirming that our sacred Pesach text is really a book for all seasons.

In 2015, having seen how universally interesting and simply exciting Torah ideas areespecially for people, like me, who have not had much experience with themI decided to see if I could introduce the genius of the Haggadah to more than just the people I could meet. I decided to write a book for Seder leaders so that they could make their Seders what they should be: the most interesting, instructive, and meaningful evening of the Jewish year, with lessons and instructions to be learned, remembered, studied, and lived by in the year to come and beyond. That book was almost done in time for our Seder in 2018.

At the conclusion of our Seder, our friend Ken Mehlman turned to me and noted that it is remarkable how much practical wisdom, interesting ideas, and actionable insights were in the Haggadah. I said, Thank you, yes. He said that I should share it with more people than were just at the Seder. I told him that I had nearly completed a guide for Seder leaders.

Ken said that was not the book I should have written. I asked Ken what he had in mind. He said that the Haggadah, as we had just learned at the Seder, was the original guide for lifeand that the book should be about how its lessons are accessible, actionable, and potentially transformative to Jews and gentiles, at the Seder and outside it.

Ken was, as ever, right. The rewriting process began. And here it is.

Since my first study session with Jeff, one of the main sources of enjoyment has been sharing and learning the Haggadah (and its source, the Torah) with many people. First and foremost are those who attend our weekly Torah study. There are also numerous other people whom I have been fortunate to be able to regularly turn to for everything ranging from biblical interpretations to parsing Hebrew words. The following (incomplete!) list is also a demonstration of how love of Torah can create and/or strengthen friendships. These people include Daniel Aminetzah, Jeff Ballabon, Yaron Carni, Eli Elefant, David Fox, Daniel Jeydel, Tal Keinan, Mati Kochavi, Professor Raphael Magarik, Ambassador Michael Oren, Judith Pieprz, Doron Spielman, Bishop Robert Stearns, Cantor Howard Stahl, and Rabbis Shmuley Boteach, Yechiel Eckstein (of blessed memory), Meni Even-Israel, David Fohrman, Matt Gewirtz, Moshe Gitler, Elie Kaunfer, Simcha Mirvis, Moshe Scheiner, Joe Schwartz, Meir Soloveichik, Steven Weil, Levi Welton, Mark Wildes, and David Wolpe.