has lasting negative ramifications. Laban's urge to ensure his older daughter not be left unmarried can be interpreted as leading to the Exile in Egypt; his anxiety over seeing his son-in-law throw away his family's comfortable position in Aram in search of a risky new beginning back in Canaan leads him to oppose the return of the Children of Israel to the Promised Land. His name can also be seen as symbolic in this matter: it means "white", the visual representation of purity, without visible stain, symbolizing those without apparent evil motives whose actions nevertheless result in undesirable outcomes. Laban and Passover Laban is referenced significantly in the Passover Haggadah, in the context of the answer to the traditional child's question, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" The prescribed answer begins with a quote from : "arami oved avi": normally translated as "a wandering Aramean was my father", alluding either to Abram or Jacob, but here interpreted unusually as "ibbed Arami et-avi", "an Aramean destroyed my father", as made clear by the rabbinical exegesis read in the Seder: Come and learn what Laban the Aramean sought to do our father Jacob. For Pharaoh issued his edict against only the males, but Laban sought to uproot all, as it is said, 'An Aramean would have destroyed my father, and he went down to Egypt and he became there a nation, great, mighty and populous.' There may also be a play on words here, using arami in two senses – as both arami, "an Aramean", and rama′i, "a deceiver", since Laban cheated Jacob (Genesis Rabbah 70:19). In this interpretation, arami personifies the Israelite peoples’ bitter enemy. The question of what the connection is between the apparently disjoint tales of Laban and Pharaoh is interpreted in several ways by rabbinical authorities. Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer explains in his Hukkat HaPesach that Laban was, in fact, the primum mobile of the entire Exile and Exodus saga. Rachel was Jacob's divinely intended wife and could hypothetically have given birth to Joseph as Jacob's firstborn with rights of primogeniture. In this counterfactual, Jacob's favoring Joseph's succession as the leader of the fledgling nation of Israel would have been seen as perfectly normal and fitting, given the customs of the time. No older brothers would have felt cheated and jealous, and Joseph would not have been sold into slavery. Thus, there would have been no