Haggadah: “Time Compacted” From The Diary of A Former Slave

We had been waiting for six months while God dealt with the Egyptians. Now things were happening quickly; big things, major changes. It took God months to humble Egypt, and He wanted to transform us into new people in just a matter of two weeks.

It was as if Moshe knew exactly what we were feeling and thinking: “This Pesach is one day and night. In the future it will be a seven day holiday. God is compacting the full holiday into one day and night.”

We couldn’t fully understand what Moshe was saying. “Look,’ he said, “You will eat your offering dressed in your travel clothes, your packed bags at your side. You must finish your meal before midnight.”

“Will we be leaving at midnight? We don’t want to leave when everything is dark, as if we are sneaking out.”

“No, you won’t leave at midnight. You will leave the next day, but so much will happen that you have to understand that you will feel that you are speeding through time. Your former masters will bang at your doors begging you to leave right away. But I want you all to demand all their treasures, the ones you discovered during the plague of darkness. They will have to pay you to leave. They will actually be paying you for your work. They will have nothing left because they are nothing without you. Everything will change, and it will happen quickly.”

“I still don’t understand why we have to eat ready to travel if we won’t travel until the next morning,” a man shouted.

A man who looked like a Chassidic Rebbe, I think his name was Weinberg of Slonim, stood up and explained, “Because our journey actually begins when we eat the offering. We are not dressed for the trip out of Egypt. We are dressed for an entirely new journey through life.”