Word: כל, kol, “every” or “all”
Context: The word kol and its variant, kulanu,”all of us,” is used about 30 times in the Magid section of the Haggadah. A few examples:
“Let all [kol] who are hungry, come and eat.” (Ha Lachma Anya)
“Tonight we are all [kulanu] reclining” (Mah Nishtanah)
“In every [kol] generation, a person is obligated to see herself as if she left Egypt.”
A Pervasive Theme: The word kol implies a theme of inclusiveness; everyone is invited, no one left out. This theme is also communicated through the tradition of the four children, the wise, the wicked, the simpleton and the one who does not know how to ask. All are to be engaged at the seder, all types of people or perhaps all parts of every person, our analytical parts and our skeptical parts and our pure parts and our youngest baby parts who have no words. All are welcome here at our table. The seder is a place of inclusiveness.
The seder is a place of inclusiveness because redemption requires everyone to be involved; redemption requires completeness; redemption requires wholeness and integration. We need all types of people and we need all parts of ourselves, each one a unique gift.
Moshe understood this before he left Egypt. When Pharaoh suggested that only the full-grown men leave, Moshe asserted: bene’areinu uvzkeineinu nelekh, “we will go with our young people and with our elders; with our sons and with our daughters” (Exodus 10:9). Redemption is something that only happens when everyone is included.
The “everyone” included in the Haggadah spans not just personality type, gender and age, but also time period; the repeated use of the phrase bekhol dor vador, “in every generation,” as well as the Haggadah’s multi-layered text from different time-periods, both bolster this sense of inclusiveness. We are all – we, today, as well as all those from every other generation of the past and the future – we are all working toward redemption together, and we can only do so if everyone is included; the process requires the resources of every person from every age.
The One Danger: The one danger to our seder’s proper running – to the achievement of redemption and transformation – is exclusion. The wicked son is chastised because he excludes himself – in the Haggadah’s words, “he took himself out of the klal,” the word klal meaning “totality” or “the whole group,” coming from the root kol. To practice such exclusion, the Haggadah tells us, is to be kofer ba’ikar, “to deny the essence,” i.e. to deny the most basic principle of the seder – inclusiveness.
It should be noted and taken in that the wicked son has excluded solely himself. We might have imagined that exclusion would only be considered a real danger when it involves one person’s exclusion of another. Not so. The Haggadah speaks to the emotional reality of our humanity; for many of us, the person we are most likely to exclude from belonging, to exclude from full participation in redemption, is ourselves. The Haggadah speaks sternly of this tendency – even an exclusion of self is not to be allowed here. Redemption requires every person; every person matters, even you.
(As an added confirmation of this sense that the cardinal sin of the seder is non-inclusiveness, note that Lavan is designated the ultimate archenemy because he attempted la’akor et hakol, “to uproot the kol.”. Literally, this means that he attempted to kill everyone as opposed to Pharaoh who only decreed death on the boys, but it might also be interpreted as uprooting the principle of kol, of all-inclusiveness.)
Message: Whom do you include at your seder? Whom do you welcome? Seders can be complicated affairs precisely because we often gather people of diverse practice and orientation and age and custom, and somehow, out of this group, we strive to move forward and achieve some transformation and redemption. But perhaps this difficulty is not accidental, a happenstance of our odd groupings and families, but intentional – redemption only happens when all types of people are included; we are only whole with all of us together.
What is true on a group level is also true on an individual level. Personal redemption cannot be achieved when we exclude any parts of ourselves. Even our youngest parts who have no words and even the ones who were deemed wicked by our families, even they need to be brought into the circle. All parts are welcome here, inside us, at the Seder, and every day. This inclusiveness is the only way to achieve wholeness and integration, to redeem our full selves.
The Final Redemption: In the Haggadah’s discussion of the commandment to remember the exodus of Egypt “all the days of your life,” the word “all,” kol, becomes the locus of interpretation. According to one opinion, kol comes to include nights as well as days – one must work towards this redemptive state literally “all” the time, 24/7. According to the other opinion – in classic inclusive rabbinic style, both opinions are cited – the purpose of the word kol is lehavi liyimot hamashiah, which literally means: “in order to include the Messianic era,” but can also be understood as “to bring about the Messianic era.” Inclusion – the work of kol, of welcoming all parts of ourselves and others – is a project that, as it spreads to larger and larger circles, brings us closer to the ultimate redemption, a time of perfect peace and unity and integration.
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