At every Passover seder, we ask the same question: Why is this night different from all other nights?

The answer lives in four symbolic acts — each one holding the memory of what it means to be forced from home. The bitter herbs taste like oppression. The matzah carries the urgency of flight, baked without time to rise. We dip in salt water to remember tears. We recline because we’ve reached safety and can finally rest.

These aren’t just symbols. They’re the architecture of displacement itself — fear, flight, grief, and the aching hope for sanctuary.

Why is this night different from all other nights? It is a question meant not only to open our minds, but to open our hearts. Hidden within its answer lies the deepest truth of our collective story: that many times throughout history, our people have known what it is to be uprooted and vulnerable as a stranger with nowhere to go. And yet, our story is one of survival because someone somewhere opened a door and showed compassion over fear. Our internal resilience blended with external intervention transformed our despair into liberation.

This Passover, as we gather around seder tables telling the story of our people, families we serve at HIAS are walking a path that echoes our now shared history. A mother crossing borders with her children, carrying only what she could grab. A teenager in a new country, learning words for “safe” and “home” in a language that’s not yet familiar. An asylum seeker finally able to sleep without fear — maybe for the first time in years.

The Haggadah doesn’t let us keep our distance. It asks us to taste the bitterness, feel the urgency, remember the tears, and then act on what we know. And it offers one of the most challenging and transformative mandates in all of Jewish tradition:

“In every generation, everyone is obligated to see themselves as though they personally left Egypt.”

This is not merely an exercise in empathy. It is a call to responsibility. A reminder that memory without action is incomplete. A demand that we do for others what was once done for us.

Refugees, asylum seekers, and displaced people are facing increasing xenophobia, shrinking protections, and political winds that threaten to erase their dignity and their rights. At a moment when so many countries are choosing fear over compassion, we need the courage to welcome.

This Passover, as we ask why this night is different, we already know. It’s different because we do not let ourselves get distracted. Because we choose to remember. Because we choose to act. Because you choose to be with us.

Join HIAS in taking action to welcome the stranger and protect refugees and immigrants.