Background This passage has confounded many generations of commentators on the Haggadah. To What does the opening word of the passage, V’hee, “And it is that,” refer? Rabbi Lorberbaum ties this statement together with the previous one but he also offers an alternative explanation based on the work of Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi. Rabbi Lorberbaum repeatedly refers to this work and even structures his commentary based on this early work from the sixteenth century. His questions are similar to the ones that Rabbi Ashkenazi asks though his answers are not always the same. And it is that which has sustained our ancestors and us. How does God “keep His promise”?What is the Haggadah referring to when it says “And it is that”? This is an explanation of the expression in the previous passage, “Blessed is He.” We bless God not only because He made a promise to us, but because He actively takes an interest in its fulfillment. This is what has sustained us from generation to generation. Even when others rose to destroy us, they could not destroy our sense of hope, which was a direct product of God’s interest in us. And even in exile, when we were seemingly cut off from God, that sense of hope sustained us in the face of overwhelming odds. The fact that God determined the end gave us reason to go on and survive. God’s promise to Abraham that in four hundred years He would redeem the Israelites from Egypt not only sustained his descendents but continues to sustain us as well.

Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi, the Ma’asei Hashem, understands this passage differently. The expression “And it is that which has sustained us,” refers to the statement that follows: “For in each generation they have risen against us but the Holy One has saved us from them.” What is it that has sustained us? The fact that God has allowed us to survive against overwhelming odds not by destroying those who hated us but simply by allowing us to remain alive. If God had used us to punish the other nations than it would have appeared that we were simply God’s means of punishment for others. The fact that we survived regardless of the other nations was a sign of God’s love rather than God’s anger. Israel’s survival is a sign of God’s love.