כל דכפין ייתי ויכול

Why do we begin our seder by inviting all of the hungry and poor to come and join us?

Primo Levi was a survivor of Auschwitz. In his book "If this Is Man" he relates that the worst time of all was when the Nazi's left in January 1945 fearing the Russian advance. All prisoners who could walk were taken on brutal death marches. The only people left in the camp were those who were too ill to move. For ten days they were left alone with only scraps of food and fuel. When the broken window was repaired and the stove began to spread its heat, something seemed to relax in everyone, and at that moment Towarowski [a Franco-Pole suffering from Typhus] proposed to the others that they offer a slice of bread to the three of us that had been working. And so it was agreed. Only a day before a similar event would have been inconceivable. The law of the camps was "eat your own bread and if you can, that of your neighbor", and left no room for gratitude. It really meant that the law of the camps was dead. It was the first human gesture that occurred among us. I believe that that moment can be dated as the beginning of the change by which we who had not died slowly changed from prisoners to men again.

Freedom means to share. A slave can't share because he never knows what will happen tomorrow. A free person can share because he no longer fears the unknown future. That is why we begin our seder by inviting the poor to join us. [Based on R' Jonathan Sacks' hagada.]

LOVE AND BLESSINGS:)!!