One of the mitzvos on the Seder
night is when we praise God; we begin with our disgraceful situations and end
with our praiseworthy situations. There is a disagreement among the Rabbis as
to what these situations are. According to Rav, we begin by telling that our
forefathers in the time of Terach, Abraham’s father, were idol worshippers and
end by saying that now God has brought us close to him, taught us the true
ideas, and distinguished us from the rest of the nations. Shmuel says that we
begin by saying that our forefathers were slaves in Egypt and all the evils
that happened to us there, and we end by telling how God freed us with all the
wondrous miracles. In
our Haggadahs we do both.
I believe it is possible to explain the argument between Rav and Shmuel as follows: According to Rav, the essential praise we give to God Pesach night is the recognition of our ‘spiritual’ freedom. But according to Shmuel, it’s the recognition of our ‘physical’ freedom.