Will this night be different from all other nights?

At sundown this evening, Jews around the world will begin their observance of Passover, the holiday that commemorates the flight of the ancient Israelites from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the promised land more than 3,000 years ago. The parallels to events of today are inescapable -- and not only for Jews.
As families join together tonight in the oldest celebration of both physical liberation and spiritual freedom, they will read from a book called the "Haggadah," the retelling of the events that occurred millennia ago. Yet in that story is the explicit recitation that & quot;In every generation, each of us should feel as though we ourselves had gone forth from Egypt. And you shall explain to your child on that day that this is what the Eternal did for me when I myself went forth from Egypt."
It is not enough to simply recollect history; one must feel as if its lessons have been personally experienced as well. Thus, for thousands of years, the unity of the Jewish people has survived.
It is not hard to imagine the Jews in Israel today understanding the words from the Haggadah about new evils seeking to destroy the Jewish people in every generation. They must live with the terror of suicide bombings, for example, every day.
The terrible events of Sept. 11 caused many Americans to both fear the evil that has emerged in the world but also to recall the stories of our nation's own birth and growth.
But if the stories are relegated to animated television shows, their significance fades. What if, instead, our national holidays -- like Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day and Veterans Day, for example -- were not simply days off work or school, but were days on which each person, each family considered the events of those days as if they themselves had been there?
American parallel: Just as the youngest Jewish child present at the Passover Seder meal tonight will ask the question, "Why is this night different from all other nights," American children might ask, "Why is this day different from all other days?" And just as Jewish parents retell the story of the Jewish nation's founding in ancient days, American parents on the Fourth of July could help their children understand what it was like to be a soldier in George Washington's cold and threadbare Army, or on Thanksgiving to relive spiritually what the deliverance from fear and want meant to the Pilgrims.
If American children truly appreciated the sacrifice of their own forebears in creating a nation of free people, perhaps we would see their growing up to take on the rights and privileges of this land more seriously -- ready to tell their own children and their children's children why days and nights in freedom will always be better than the alternative.