Reflections on Freedom: Let All Who Are Hungry Come and Eat

It was my turn to host the S.Y. Agnon book group, and I took extra care in preparing, putting bowls of nuts and fruit on the table, setting out mugs and tea and honey; I even baked cookies. I was alone at home that summer evening with my young son asleep upstairs. The house smelled good, and the late dusk seemed to rub against it, a purple cat against a stone leg. I’d asked the women in the group not to ring the bell, so as not to wake the young one, but suddenly the bell was ringing, over and over. I went to the door, surprised, annoyed even, to find my friend Miriam pressing the bell, and then more surprised to see a tall young man standing next to her. I opened the door and Miriam angled her way in. Close the door! Close the door! she said, obviously distressed, and before I knew what was happening, the man was pushing the door open. Do you know him? I asked as I pushed back. Miriam said no, he had followed her after she parked, and ran to call the police. And then, suddenly, he was in the house, standing across from me. My brain tried to make sense of what was happening. Get out of my house, I said, you need to get out. But instead he started walking deeper inside, into a house that smelled of freshly baked cookies, with a sleeping child upstairs. 

Suddenly I thought of Rumi’s poem “The Guest House”: “This being human is a guest house . . . Every morning a new arrival . . . Welcome and entertain them all! . . . treat each guest honorably . . . meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.”

I didn’t know what else to do, so I said, You are here now, in my house. Welcome. And the man stopped moving towards the staircase. You are my guest and I’ve just baked cookies. Are you hungry? The man didn’t move, but he nodded, and I told him to wait on the front porch, that I would bring him a cookie, and he did, and I did. And he ate, and he left, before the police even showed up.

At the beginning of the Passover Seder we sing: Let all who are hungry come and eat; let all who are needy come and partake. Why begin the Seder feast by throwing open the doors of our literal and emotional homes to guests, inviting them all in? Is the Haggadah teaching us that freedom involves becoming secure enough to open our doors, sated enough to handle the hunger of others? This doesn’t mean that we need to compromise our own security. But it does require that we shift our perspective from one of scarcity and constant danger to one of abundance and inner strength. We may be surprised when we do.

My great-grandparents emigrated from Eastern Europe in the early twentieth century and made their way to Evarts, Kentucky—coal mining country. They opened a general store and made a living, but most families around them worked for the coal companies, where they were paid in “scrip,” a currency that was accepted only in the company stores. The miners eventually went on strike, but the companies held strong, and the people of Evarts were starving. So, on Passover Eve, my great-grandparents took the money they’d been saving to buy a car and instead bought a trainload of flour. They put an ad in the local papers: Let all who are hungry, no matter color or creed, come and eat. In response, the coal company folks shot bullets through their windows, and a local judge arrested them for aiding and abetting the strikers. They escaped just before Passover began, forced  to abandon their lives again and start from scratch, again, further north. For them, the goldene medine, America, wasn’t truly free whilst they had enough to buy a car and their neighbors’ children had no shoes. They weren’t free until they could help others escape from narrow places of servitude and fear. 

My great-grandparents embodied the spirit of Passover, that our freedom comes with the obligation to make space for the freedom of others, even when it impacts our comforts. May we, too, live with the words Let all who are hungry come and eat, greeting, with dignity and generosity, over and over, the arrivals at our doorsteps.

This article appears in the Spring-Summer 2026 issue of Lubavitch International, to subscribe to the magazine, click here.