were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt”—but the individual participant is invited to internalize the collectively retrieved past: “In every generation one must look upon oneself as if one had in one’s own person come out of Egypt.” In the course of a long development every item of food eaten and every gesture performed during the ritual was given its own specific historical referent. The matzoh lifted up by the one presiding for all to see is the bread of affliction eaten by the ancestors in Egypt. It would