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Rachtza is the ritual where we wash our hands, before we eat the matza. The way we wash our hands is the same way that we wash our hands on Shabbat and other holidays with a blessing. First, we lift up the cup and then we wash our hands on both sides in and out and top and bottom. As we wash our hands we make a blessing. (One should not talk unnecessarily until after eating the matza.) We make a...

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Together as we wash our hands, they move into the bowl of water, and back out of the water. Why do we do this? Are our hands really getting clean without soap? We won’t be eating for some time, why do we do this so early? The washing of our hands suggests that we are open to question. One question that is always asked is about hope. Rick Recht answers in his song: This is the hope that holds us together,...

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Traditionally each of the cups of wine are linked to one of the statements of redemption spoken by God in the Torah “I will bring you out”. “I will deliver you”. “I will redeem you”. "I will gather you to me.” (Exodus 6:6-7). This cup of wine therefore corresponds to the first statement “I will bring you out of slavery” For women the first step to freedom was equality in the law.  The struggle for this freedom began in the desert,...

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 Everyone takes a piece of raw horse-radish. Question: Why do we eat this Bitterness? “So the Tight Place made the God-wrestlers subservient with crushing-labor; they embittered their lives with hard servitude in clay and in bricks and with all kinds of servitude in the field, all their serfdom in which they made them subservient with crushing-labor. (Exodus 1: 13-14.) Invite the phrases that invoke flooded cities, ruined mountains, parched fields, etc. Give a chunk of blood-red beet to everyone.  Question:  Why...

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when I am assaulted or harassed, I am asked what I am wearing or if I have been drinking. when I am belittled to only be as important as the size of my breasts. when I am degraded for having multiple partners but a boy is celebrated for “getting around.” that I can’t wear form tting clothing without it becoming indicative of my character. teaching our daughters to avoid being raped, instead of teaching our sons not to rape. watching my...

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Maimonides urged us to care for our bodies so that we would be free to concentrate our energies on God. In the modern world, one of the greatest threats to our physical health is mental stress. Stress causes insomnia, digestive problems, heart disease, autoimmune disorders, depression, memory impairment and countless other complications. As women, we are particularly vulnerable to the stress caused by multiple and exhausting commitments to our families, friends, jobs and communities. This year, let us learn how to...

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By Avigayil Halpern Blood: Young girls tuck tampons quickly into backpacks, secret them in purses, hide them in Ugg boots. It’s not blue dye that the river is running with, and periods are more trouble than the pamphlet in that goody bag from middle-school health class would leave one to believe. “It’s beautiful to be female,” we’re told, but nobody accounts for cramps and cramps and cramps and bloodied sheets and cramps. We are under no obligation to love our bodies,...

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The Four Cups of the Seder are structurally connected to the four verbal performances this evening: (1) Kiddush, sanctifying the holiday (2) Maggid, the storytelling (3) Birkat HaMazon, completing the Pesach meal; and (4) Hallel, completing the festival Psalms. The Talmud connects the Four Cups to God's Four Promises to Israel: "Tell the children of Israel: I am Adonai! I will take them out... I will rescue them… I will redeem them… and I will marry them taking them as my...

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Freedom. It isn’t once, to walk outunder the Milky Way, feeling the riversof light, the fields of dark—freedom is daily, prose-bound, routineremembering. Putting together, inch by inchthe starry worlds. From all the lost collections."For Memory,"  A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far

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The Haggadah and the story of Passover is about God fulfilling his promise to Abraham and maintaining the Jewish people's status as the chosen people and delivering them forth from Egypt, even after the cruel genocidal practices of the Pharaoh. History has a way of repeating itself, even though many Jews have come to believe that the Holocaust has broken that promise irrevocably and justify atheism through the religious lens of the broken covenant. Either way, if you are not particularly...