Pesach Supplement 5782 – Freedom and Responsibility
Introduction
Walk with your guests to the front door or have one guest rise from the table and walk to the front door. There, place a pair of shoes on the doorstep and read the words below.
The heart of the Passover Seder tells the story of the Jewish people’s exodus from slavery in Egypt. During the retelling of this story, we say the words, “Arami oved avi.” This phrase is sometimes translated as “My father was a wandering Aramean” and other times as “An Aramean sought to destroy my father.” Somewhere between the two translations lies the essence of the Jewish experience: a rootless people who have fled persecution time and time again.
Soon we will recite the words “Arami oved avi” as we retell the story of our people’s exodus from Egypt. These words acknowledge that we have stood in the shoes of the refugee. Today, as we celebrate our freedom, we commit ourselves to continuing to stand with contemporary refugees [in Ukraine and other places around the world]. In honor of this commitment and against the backdrop of terrible restrictions on refugees, we place a pair of shoes on the doorstep of our home to acknowledge that none of us is free until all of us are free and to pledge to stand in support of welcoming those who do not yet have a place to call home.
--From the 2022 HIAS Haggadah Supplement
Kadesh (Kiddush and the First Cup of Wine)
Raising one’s glass is often performed as a toast, to celebrate good people or good works or important milestones achieved. Consider dedicating each of the four cups of wine seder night to a different individual or organization that is making a difference in repairing our world. Four guests can be assigned in advance to choose and report briefly on a social justice champion they wish to acknowledge and contributions to support recommended institutions can be made once the holiday ends and/or in lieu of afikoman gifts. Some organizations working specifically to provide relief in Ukraine include:
Urchatz (First Hand Washing Without Blessing)
Washing hands is a cleansing process and often regarded as symbolic of this purpose, perhaps cleansing ourselves of certain aspects of our day or of this world. However, instead, we might regard it as a focus on hands themselves; the labor of human endeavor and the skillful creations crafted, both of which contributed to this meal. There is a particular significance in focusing on this aspect of the ritual tonight, as we consider the human endeavor exploited in the act of enslavement. The hands are washed without a blessing.
Today, it is still possible to buy and sell another human being. The price of a slave, adjusted for inflation, has actually dropped compared to the time of the American Civil War. In our time, human life is cheap. It’s another commodity, to be bought and consumed. Like our ancestors in Egypt, every day voices cry out to God for freedom. Will we hear them? Will we help them be free? Or will we harden our hearts?
--From Passover and Human Rights by Rabbis for Human Rights
Karpas (Dipping the Green Vegetable)
As we take for the first time one of the items on our seder plate we recognize that these symbols were chosen to help tell the story of our Jewish journey from slavery to freedom. In more contemporary times, communities have sometimes chosen to add additional items to the traditional ones whether it is an orange representing the presence of women in ritual life or potato peels commemorating the sacrifices of our ancestors who suffered during the Holocaust. (This year we might add blue and yellow ribbons to stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine.)
Before the holiday, download this Reimagining the Seder Plate guide from HIAS and have children (and adults!) bring their drawings to the table to share seder night.
Yachatz (Breaking the Middle Matzah)
Being poor is having your heat shut off in the winter because your parents can’t pay your bill.
Being poor is having two blankets for seven people in the family.
Being poor is wishing you could eat out in a restaurant.
Being poor is wearing shoes that someone else threw out.
Being poor is lying when someone asks you what your father does for a living.
Being poor is pretending that you don’t care that you got no gift for your birthday.
Being poor is waiting all day in a clinic to see a doctor you don’t know.
Being poor is a welfare worker asking your mother too many questions and making her cry.
Being poor is not being afraid of the dentist because you’ve never seen one.
Being poor is feeling a little mad because you never have what you need.
Go around the table, adding your own continuation to the sentence “Being poor is….”
--From A Night to Remember by Mishael Zion and Noam Zion
Maggid (Telling the Story – The Four Questions, The Four Children, The 10 Plagues and More)
The Four Questions
As we sit down to enjoy abundant food this Passover night, let us consider these alternate four questions created by Mazon and the Jewish Initiative for Animals that might help to inform and create conversation around conscious eating and food choices.
The Four Children
At Passover each year, we read the story of our ancestors’ pursuit of liberation from oppression. When confronting this history, how do we answer our children when they ask us how to pursue justice in our time?
What does the activist child ask? “The Torah tells me, ‘Justice, justice you shall pursue,’ but how can I pursue justice?” Empower her always to seek pathways to advocate for the vulnerable. As Proverbs teaches, “Speak up for the mute, for the rights of the unfortunate. Speak up, judge righteously, champion the poor and the needy.”
What does the skeptical child ask? “How can I solve problems of such enormity?” Encourage him by explaining that he need not solve the problems, he must only do what he is capable of doing. As we read in Pirkei Avot – The Ethics of our Ancestors, “It is not your responsibility to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
What does the indifferent child ask? “It’s not my responsibility.” Persuade her that responsibility cannot be shirked. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes, “The opposite of good is not evil; the opposite of good is indifference. In a free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty but all are responsible.”
And the uninformed child who does not know how to ask… Prompt him to see himself as an inheritor of our people’s legacy. As it says in Deuteronomy, “You must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” At this season of liberation, let us work toward the liberation of all people. Let us respond to our children’s questions with action and justice.
--From Next Year in a Just World: A Global Justice Haggadah by American Jewish World Service
The Ten Plagues
Remembering the ten plagues that God brought upon the Egyptians when Pharaoh refused to free the Israelites, we have the opportunity tonight to recognize that the world is not yet free of adversity and struggle. This is especially true for refugees. After you pour out a drop of wine for each of the ten plagues that Egypt suffered, we invite you to then pour out drops of wine for ten modern plagues afflicting refugee communities worldwide and in the United States.
1. violence 2. dangerous journeys 3. poverty 4. food insecurity 5. lack of access to education 6. xenophobia 7. anti-refugee legislation 8. language barriers 9. workforce discrimination 10. loss of family
--From the 2022 HIAS Haggadah Supplement
Rachtzah (Second Hand Washing)
Because the act of hand-washing is connected to the act of eating, some follow the tradition to refrain from speaking after washing one’s hands until blessing and tasting the matzah. See how many freedom-themed songs, Jewish or secular, you can come up with and fill this in-between time by humming them without words.
Motzi Matzah (Matzah Blessings)
It was the practice of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak each Passover to supervise the bakeries of Berditchev. In addition to the kashrut of the matzot, he was concerned with the working conditions of the women and children employees. One year, observing that they were being exploited, being forced to work from early morning until late at night, he approached the bakery owner. “Our enemies used to cause great consternation among our people,” he said, “charging that we use non-Jewish blood to make our matzah. Today, however, God knows and you know as well that this is a foolish lie. But among our many sins, I see that there are Jewish bakers who prepare their matzah with Jewish blood, with the blood of the poor Jewish women and children from whom, unfortunately, they squeeze out the last bit of strength.
As we eat this matzah, the bread of affliction, we remember the conditions of unseen workers who help to bring us food. We follow in the example of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev and acknowledge that the kashrut of our food also depends on the conditions of the workers who make it for us.
--From In Every Generation: A Haggadah Supplement on Economic Justice by Rabbis for Human Rights 2003
Maror (The Bitter Herbs)
8-Step Maror Meditation
- Sit comfortably in your chair.
- Place the maror in your hand. While feeling the maror, reflect on the comfort level you are currently experiencing.
- Raise the maror to your mouth. Note that you are about to subject yourself to discomfort, in the midst of a festival of freedom and joy. What are you feeling as you are about to taste the bitterness?
- Put the maror in your mouth. Chew three times and then stop.
- Pause to note what the bitterness feels like. Think about a source of bitterness in the world today. Close your eyes and picture it. Open your eyes.
- Swallow the maror.
- Make a realistic, tangible commitment to addressing the source of bitterness that you pictured in the world.
- Share your commitment with the person next to you.
--From Food and Justice: A Haggadah Supplement by Uri L’Tzedek
Korech (Making the Hillel Sandwich)
In remembrance of today’s slaves, up to 4 million people trafficked each year, now, in our own time, some in our very own country, we eat this extra portion of maror [in the Hillel sandwich]. We remember women entrapped by criminals who promised them a better life abroad. We think of children sold into slavery who knot carpets or tend crops at this moment. We recall refugee men swept into captive labor. With this extra maror, we who are free share the bitterness of the lot of today’s slaves, resolving to appeal to governments, leaders, and communities to end human trafficking for all time.
--From Expand on the Telling: Bringing Modern Day Slavery to our Seders by Free the Slaves
Tzafun (Finding the Afikomen)
In the beginning of our seder, we compared hiding the afikomen to hiding parts of ourselves. While hiding sometimes has its purpose, the Passover meal is never complete until we find the afikomen. The story of freedom is never complete until we find that which is hidden. In our personal struggles as GLBTQA people, often our only true redemption can be found when we come out of hiding.
It is not easy to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or intersexed in a heteronormative world with strict gender roles. Why do we, as GLBTQA people - as GLBTQA Jews - continue living within our struggle? Why don’t we just choose to try to fit into heterosexuality and more traditional gender roles? Why don’t we just hide? In Genesis, God calls out to Adam after he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and asks “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). Adam replies “I was afraid because I was naked, so I tried to hide myself” (Genesis 3:10)
Just like Adam, we often fall under the illusion that by hiding from ourselves or the people around us, we are also hiding from God. But by hiding from ourselves, we just make God, truth, and love harder to find. If we hide from ourselves, we relinquish all hope, and will never get the opportunity for redemption. After Adam reveals himself to God, God makes it known that Adam and Eve are in for hard times, but God also makes Adam and Eve garments with which to cover and protect themselves. Like Adam and Eve, we will face hard times, but if we come out of hiding we can allow God to help us and protect us through it all.
--From Ma Nishtana: A Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Ally Haggadah,
Bonus! Buy free trade kosher for Passover chocolate or “Resisting tyrants since Pharaoh” stickers to give out as afikoman presents.
Barech (Grace after Meals)
The Grace after Meals concludes with the drinking of the third cup of wine.
This cup of wine is dedicated to the women who do not find themselves embraced by a community, as we are tonight.
Women who endure injury, humiliation, and sexual assault and cannot talk about it. Women who suffered unspeakable abuses and did not live to tell.
This cup is for the shattered souls who never dreamed it would happen to them…
The women who stay to protect children, avoid shame, and hear the burden of shalom bayit in a home with no peace.
The women who stay because they believe in love.
And the women who escaped, and now struggle to find homes, build skills, and support their families.
This cup is for the women from whom everything has been taken – their families, their friends, their homes, their communities, their dignity, and their lives.
On Passover, as we celebrate liberation, we reaffirm our commitment to make all women safe in their homes and in their relationships.
This cup is for the women who find this night is no different from any other night.
They are our sisters, they are ourselves, and they are not alone.
--From Jewish Women International
Hallel (Songs of Praise)
Try singing this Hebrew version of the song “We Shall Overcome:”
Anu nitgaber We shall overcome
Anu nitgaber We shall overcome
Anu nitgaber b’vo hayom We shall overcome some day
Ani ma’amin, I believe
B’emunah shleima With perfect faith
She’anu nitgaber hayom That we shall overcome today
Nirtzah (Conclusion)
When we rise up from our Seder tables, let us commit ourselves to stamping out xenophobia and hatred in every place that it persists. Echoing God’s words when God said, “I take you to be my people,” let us say to those who seek safety in our midst, “we take you to be our people.” May we see past difference and dividing lines and remember, instead, that we were all created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. May we see welcoming the stranger at our doorstep not as a danger but as an opportunity – to provide safe harbor to those seeking refuge from oppression and tyranny, to enrich the fabric of our country and to live out our Jewish values in action. Blessed are You, Adonai Our God, who has created us all in Your image.
--From the 2022 HIAS Haggadah Supplement,
