My dear chevre, dear Temple family,
We enter Pesach together. Not together around each other’s tables, nor yet in Starensier, as we might wish, passing the festive dishes hand to hand and belting out the songs in harmony and pouring water over our hands with a bowl held by another, that we might all practice caring and being cared for. And yet we are wholly together, experiencing the confinement of Mitzrayim collectively in a way we may never have done in our lives. None of us leave our homes without risk of contagion. All of us feel the pain of separation and work impacted, sometimes ended. All of us long for freedom of movement, freedom to hug our families.
We’re living the Pesach story, my friends. The logistics of this year are unique to the coronavirus. But the challenge, the invitation, with which this story presents us, is the same.
How do we increase freedom in the world?
We don’t ask this question out of altruism. We ask it because, in the words of Lilla Watson, “your liberation is bound up with mine.” The coronavirus has already taught us one overwhelming lesson, that when anyone vulnerable in our population suffers, we are all affected—we are all at risk. Only by taking action together can we protect ourselves, BY protecting each other.
How do we help every other person who needs it—every person wrongly imprisoned, running from terror, abused at work, abused at home, suffering from ill health or addiction, suffering discrimination based on their gender identity, sexual orientation, race, religion, physical ability—to achieve the same freedom we crave and enjoy?
When you sit at your seder table this week—whether you are keeping company with just the holiday, with your nuclear family, or with a larger crowd by videoconference (and I certainly hope I’ll see you on the 2nd night, Thursday, at 5:30 pm for our community seder!), I invite you to center your Pesach observance around this question. What has God done for you personally, to liberate you from Mitzrayim, the structures and circumstances that might confine you and inflict pain? What work remains yet to be done, for you and those around you and the world in which we live? How can you be part of that work rather than acted upon by it?
This year, what will each one of us do to “l’har’ot et atzmo k’ilu hu yatz’ah miMitzrayim?” To show ourselves, in the Sefardi Haggadah’s words, as if we had personally gone out from Egypt?
You choose your answer.
Our Temple has a long, rich history of understanding our own Jewish liberation story to obligate us toward modern refugees and migrants. In that spirit, I offer you two invitations for your own Pesach action this year: a short animated
video
made by HIAS (the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) beautifully drawing that connection for us, and a
petition
from American Jewish World Service that each one of us can sign, asking Congress to support the rule of law and human rights protection in Guatemala, where I recently traveled. (
AJWS
,
T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights
, and
HIAS
each offer an abundance of compelling Passover ritual to use in your seders, including their own downloadable Haggadot; click on the links to explore those resources.)
Your seder is your own to make, this year. Get as creative as you like. (And see the picture below for suggestions for your table!) Each year, I suggest that we “embrace the mess.” This year, we also must embrace the strangeness. This Pesach is different from all other Pesachs, and we feel loss in that. And yet it brings us back, face to face, to the urgency of the first Pesach, and gives our holiday and seder fresh meaning. God willing you will be connected with your family, with your friends, with us—your community—as together we celebrate this z’man cheiruteinu, this time of our freedom. And together we will recommit to make it so, for ourselves and our loved ones and all the world.
Wishing you a chag kasher v’sameiach, a kosher and a happy holiday,
Cantor Vera
