telling

Distinctions

haggadah / maggid (הגדה, מגיד)

Force. Rashi (to Shemos 19:3), on v'sageid livnei Yisrael: Moshe was to present the matter with strength, the details and the punishments, and tageid is from gid, sinew, something tough and not soft.

Novelty. Cognates of haggadah attach to information not previously known: "who higid to you that you are naked" (Bereishis 3:11); Esther not magedes her origins (Esther 2:20); testimony in court (Vayikra 5:1), where the witness brings the court what it did not have. Ibn Ezra (to Shemos 19:9) says so outright.

Roots. Radak (Sefer HaShorashim) takes the root as נ-ג-ד, neged, opposite; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, Rav Hirsch and Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg explain that one who tells his fellow something new sets it in front of him, and Rabbi Yehuda Leib Edel that the new information opposes what the listener already holds. Menachem Ibn Saruk takes the root as the two-letter ג-ד, which Rabbi Pappenheim reads as connection: the telling lets the listener connect to what he is told.

Drawing out. Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Sefer HaTishbi): aggadah is an expression of pulling or drawing, since aggadic teaching draws the heart of its hearers; he brings Targum to Bereishis 37:28, which renders Yosef's being drawn from the pit negidu. The Netziv accordingly holds that haggadah is specifically a telling at length, a drawn-out narrative and not a brief statement.

Thanks. Rabbi Dovid Abudraham reads haggadah as an expression of admission or thanks. Rabbi Mecklenburg takes the two-letter root gad as success and fortune, so lehagid is praising Hashem in recognizing His hand in one's good fortune.

Relevance. Rabbi Ari Bergmann, in the name of Rav Moshe Shapiro's beis midrash: haggadah takes a past event and draws it into the present by showing what it means now, on the model of hagadas eidus, testimony about a past event brought to bear on a case before the court (see also Alshich to Bereishis 24:23). This is why the Haggadah applies Shemos 13:8 to the wicked son, who must be answered sharply, and to the son who does not know to ask, for whom everything is new. Rabbi Aryeh Pomeranchik heard from the Brisker Rav in the name of Rav Chaim Soloveitchik that the Pesach-night v'higadta is distinguished from the daily mention of yetzias Mitzrayim precisely by this: it requires tying the story to the matzah and marror at hand.

sippur / misaper (ספור, מספר)

General. Radak (Sefer HaShorashim): sippur relates what already happened or was already told; others allow it for new information as well. Either way it does not specify novelty. Malbim: haggadah is telling something bearing on the listener, misaper telling a story not necessarily his. Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer draws the line at the speaker's own knowledge: haggadah is relaying what he saw or heard himself, sippur is the general word for relating any account, even a dream he did not witness.

Wholeness. Rav Moshe Shapiro: everything from ס-פ-ר shares one idea, binding many details into a single whole. A sefer binds its contents into one entity; a sfar, a border, closes everything within it into one unit; mispar and sofeir, number and counting, are the ordered system in which each item holds its place. So sippur is structured telling, its parts flowing one from the next like the numbers in a count. Rabbi Pomeranchik's report of Rav Chaim fits here too: the Pesach-night mitzvah requires a question-and-answer form and the whole story in order, from the slavery through the miracles to the praise of Hashem, where the daily mention requires none of that. Peirush HaRokeach: haggadah is telling something new, sippur is "the first time and more," a story built to be retold, which is what sippur yetzias Mitzrayim is every year.

Clarity. Rabbi Mecklenburg connects ס-פ-ר to sapir, the blue stone, and to the clear sky: laying the whole story out plainly clears away the clouds with which the wicked obscure Hashem's rule of the world.

Why Chazal chose it. Rabbi Yechiel Michel Feinstein finds the precedent in Shemos 10:2, where the purpose of the plagues is l'maan tesaper to your children, that they may know Hashem. The Torah's v'higadta teaches how to tell; tesaper names the purpose, so Chazal built the name of the mitzvah on it. Rabbi Nosson Gestetner goes further and counts two mitzvos at the Seder: sippur yetzias Mitzrayim, saying the sequence of events aloud, which binds even one who is alone and already knows the story, and v'higadta, revealing to one's children what they did not know.

Rendering guidance

• V'higadta l'vincha: and you shall tell your son. Where the shiur turns on the word, gloss it once: "tell, in the sense of making it new and making it his."
• Sippur yetzias Mitzrayim: the telling of the Exodus, or leave the phrase transliterated. Misaper: relate, recount.
• Aggadah: aggadah, never "legend" or "fairytale"; the modern usage is a distortion of the word.
• Trap: English "tell" absorbs both words, and the whole point of the article is that the Torah's verb and Chazal's verb differ. Where a passage sets them side by side, render haggadah declare or set before him and sippur recount, so the reader can see two acts.
• Second trap: higid in Tanach usually carries the news value. "He told him" is thin; "he brought him word," "he disclosed," or "he declared" holds it.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Pesach: Telling the Story," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 8 Nisan 5779 (2019-04-13): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/pesach-telling-the-story, raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8217-pesach-telling-the-story.md. Primary loci cited: Shemos 13:8; 19:3 with Rashi; 19:9 with Ibn Ezra; 10:2; Bereishis 3:11; Bereishis 37:28 with Targum; Bereishis 24:23 with Alshich; Vayikra 5:1; Devarim 26:3 with Ramban; Esther 2:20; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Menachem Ibn Saruk; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur, Sefer HaTishbi; the Netziv; Rabbi Dovid Abudraham; Malbim; Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer; Peirush HaRokeach; Rabbi Aryeh Pomeranchik reporting the Brisker Rav in the name of Rav Chaim Soloveitchik. The article's comparison of Hebrew "tell" with Germanic zahlen and the English "recount" and "tell time" is general linguistics and is left out here.