Ha Lachma Anya

By Sarah Block
Bucknell University

Much wisdom can be found in the Haggadah. Though it's read only twice a year, the Haggadah has been one of the most influential books in my life, especially relating to lessons of life, tradition, and social justice. Ha Lachma Anya: "This is the bread of affliction our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat; Let all who are in need come share our Passover." Before the story of Pesah is even recalled, the Haggadah reminds Jews of the importance of opening their arms to others, of helping those in need. Because we were once slaves, we must help others to free themselves from bondage. Poverty, hunger and destitution are as much bondage as the physical slavery our ancestors were subjected to in Egypt.

Only a few short weeks ago, this passage continuously flashed through my mind as I participated in an alternative spring break trip with my university, called the "Bucknell Brigade." Begun in 1999 as a response to the destruction caused by Hurricane Mitch, a group of Bucknell University students decided to take a stand to provide aid to the people of Nicaragua who experienced the wrath of the hurricane. Every year since then, two delegations of 25 students have traveled to Nicaragua with the Brigade to both learn about the history, culture and people of the country, as well as to visit impoverished communities, work in a Bucknell-run health clinic and engage in much needed humanitarian work in the city of Managua. What I saw in Nicaragua will stay with me forever, for life in Nicaragua is nothing like life anywhere else in the world. Managua, the nations capital, is dusty, covered in trash and plastered in bright pink billboards proclaiming President Daniel Ortega's new slogan, "Cumplirle al pueblo es cumplirle al Dios," meaning, "To fulfill your duty to your country is to fulfill your duty to God." 80% of the country's population lives on less than $2.00 a day. Just walking through the city was a wakeup call to the entire group, reminding us how lucky we are, by an accident of birth, to have been born into the wealth that is the United States of America.

Nowhere could better illustrate this absolute poverty then La Chureca, the Managua municipal dump. Inside the vast wasteland of trash, dust, fire and smoke, an entire community of the most impoverished people in the country survive by sorting through the trash to find food to eat and valuables which they can sell. There is a hierarchy within this community, in which the people living near the entrance to the dump are the wealthiest, for they can pick trash right off of the garbage trucks. As you get further and further into the dump, the people become poorer and poorer. A girl in my group was having a particularly difficult time wrapping her head around the idea that these people, besides the obvious injustice of being forced to live in a dump, were living off of already picked through trash from the second poorest country in the world; our trash, to them, would have been like finding buried treasure. How can we care so little, and waste so much, when there are people in the world who are eating garbage to survive? How can we stand by and let this happen?

The words of Ha Lachma Anya, after having seen the conditions in which people live in Nicaragua, have taken on a whole new meaning for me. When it says, "Let all who are hungry come and eat," I am reminded of the children at La Chureca who struggle to get one meal a day. Our time of bondage, recalled every year during Passover, may have passed, but there are billions of people who are still enslaved. This passage is not only commanding us to open our hearts and lives to those in need during the festival of Pesah; it is reminding us that it is our duty, as Jews and as human beings to share the resources we are so fortunate to have with those people who need them most.

Sarah Block is a sophomore at Bucknell University studying history and Spanish.

[Posted 4/23/09]