The Human Rights Hag­gadah high­lights human rights issues as they come up in the Passover sto­ry. For exam­ple, when we say if God had not redeemed us we would still be slaves, what is slav­ery today? Jacob went to Egypt because of famine in Canaan — what are the rights of peo­ple flee­ing nat­ur­al dis­as­ters or vio­lence? The tenth plague con­sist­ed of slay­ing all Egypt­ian first born — was this jus­ti­fied, or are there lim­its when fight­ing even for a right­eous cause?

For these issues and many oth­ers, this hag­gadah pro­vides back­ground in both Jew­ish and sec­u­lar sources, along with ques­tions for dis­cus­sion. Human rights con­sist of val­ues that often con­flict, and peo­ple com­mit­ted to human rights can have dif­fer­ing polit­i­cal opin­ions. The Human Rights Hag­gadah aims to encour­age dis­cus­sion, include mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives, and help us clar­i­fy our own views.