“Go and learn what Laban the Aramean sought to do to our father Jacob. Pharaoh made his decree only about the males whereas Laban sought to destroy everything.”This passage from the Haggadah on Pesach – evidently based on this week’s parsha – is extraordinarily difficult to understand. It seems to make no sense, either in terms of the central theme of the Haggadah or in relation to the actual facts as recorded in the biblical text. How then are we to understand it? Perhaps the answer is this. Laban’s behaviour is the paradigm of anti-Semites through the ages. It was not so much what Laban did that the Haggadah is referring to, but what his behaviour gave rise to, in century after century.
This article is part of the Covenant & Conversation series.
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