Words of Praise “Therefore it is our duty to thank.” The versions of this text which I have found in Ashkenazic Seders and which I consider to be the correct one is, “Therefore it is our duty to thank, praise, pay tribute, glorify, exalt, honor, bless, extol and acclaim to the one who performed these miracles for our ancestors and for us.” There are nine expressions of praise. “Let us therefore, recite a new song before God, Halleluyah,” is the tenth expression of praise. It would appear that there are ten expressions of praise in the book of Psalms. In Talmud Pesahim, it states that there are ten types of songs in this book: *nigun, nitzuach, mizmor, shir, hallel, tefillah, berachah, hodaah, ashrei,*and *halleluyah.*The greatest of these terms is Halleluyahbecause it contains the name of God as well as an expression of praise. (Pesahim 117a) That is why there are nine terms of praise plus Halleluyah, which is the greatest of all the terms. Our text of the Haggadah, we read, “God took us out from slavery to freedom, from grief to joy, from mourning to feast, from subjugation to redemption… Let us say before Him, Halleluyah!”¹! The Maharal comments on the different versions of this passage toward the end of the passage “From slavery to freedom,” should be understood in the plainest sense: because the slavery was crushing, it destroyed their spirit. Regarding this we say “From grief to joy. When they were oppressed with hard labor, their spirits were broken so God came and transformed their grief into joy. “From mourning to feast” is stated to comment on the passage, “They embittered their lives;” bitterness is a type of mourning, as it says in scripture, “I will make it like time of mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day.” (Amos 8:10) God transformed this state of being into a feast which is the opposite of mourning. Life becomes bitter when a person’s life is not as it should be. Thus, Scripture state, “They embittered their lives.” These three expressions are referenced in Scripture one after the other: “so they set task masters over them to oppress them with forced labor;” (Ex. 1:11) “the Egyptians ruthlessly imposed upon the Israelites;” (Ex 1:13) and “they embittered their lives with hard labor.” (Ex. 1:14) “From subjugation to redemption:” is the fourth statements here. They were like people who were enslaved by the king but were liberated by God. ¹ In the tenth chapter of Pesahim in the Mishnahthe version of the text is different. It states, “From darkness to light and from subjugation to redemption.” The Mishnahadds a fifth statement to these four. The sages meant to teach us that while the Israelites were under the authority of the Egyptians, they were like a person who was dwelling in darkness and for whom there was something blocking the sun. While they were in Egypt, it was as if they did not completely exist yet. This is what the sages meant when they said that Israelites in Egypt were like a fetus in its mother’s womb. Regarding this state of being, the Mishnahsays, “From darkness to light.” Darkness is like not completely existing; only when they went forth from Egypt did they come to complete existence because they now became God’s people. The version of this statement in the Haggadahhas only four and not five expressions. Both are correct and there is no contradiction between them. ¹and the Haggadahhave slightly different versions of the text, the Maharal follows the rabbinic tradition of validating both versions of the text. There were, of course other versions of the Haggadah text as well, with which the Maharal was no doubt familiar. It is interesting that he offers an explanation for the different versions but respects the difference at the same time. One might say that this is an expression of pluralism.

footnotes: ¹ In our Haggadot the version is “God took us out from slavery to freedom, from grief to joy, from mourning to festivity, from darkness to great light, from subjugation to redemption. Let us recite a new song before God, Halleluyah ¹ The three verse reflect the three elements of transformationEx. 1:11 – from slavery to freedomEx. 1:13 – From grief to joyEx. 1:14 – From mourning to feast ¹ Though the Mishnah