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Shabbat Candles May the festival lights we now kindle, Inspire us to use our powers To heal and not to harm, To help and not to hinder, To bless and not to curse, To serve You, O God of freedom.

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Baruch atah Adonai, eloheynu melech haolam, shecheyanu, v'keymanu, v'higeeyanu, lazman hazeh. Blessed are You, oh Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has kept us alive and well so that we can celebrate this special time.  In the light in which we see each other, all of us are different. It is our task to kindle the sacred fire within the human spirit that illuminates every life with love. 

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Between the Fires: A Prayer for lighting Candles  by Rabbi Arthur Waskow We are the generation that stands   Between the fires: Behind us the flame and smoke  that rose from Auschwitz and from Hiroshima; From the burning forests of the Amazon, From the hottest years of human history that bring upon us Melted ice fields, Flooded cities, Scorching droughts. Before us the nightmare of a Flood of Fire, The heat and smoke that could consume all Earth. "Here! The day is...

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Just about everybody experiences the sense of being foreign sometime in their lives. Most of the adults at this table have immigrated from a foreign country. But even if you have lived in the same city your entire life, as an adult you no longer live in the same neighborhood you lived in when you were growing up. Your home is defined not only by place but also by time. People have changed; circumstances have changed. As a foreigner in that...

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Water is life.  For those who travel on foot through the borderlands, water is an essential component of the journey. No More Deaths hikes water into active migration corridors because we believe that everyone deserves access to water. It is a privilege to be able to use water for a ritual like urchatz, and as we purify our hands, we think of those who thirst in the desert.  We wash our hands now, with no blessing, to help us prepare for...

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“Remember you are water. Of course you leave salt trails. Of course you are crying. Flow. P.S. If there happens to be a multitude of griefs upon you, individual and collective, or fast and slow, or small and large, add equal parts of these considerations: that the broken heart can cover more territory. that perhaps love can only be as large as grief demands. that grief is the growing up of the heart that bursts boundaries like an old skin or...

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Leader: In the spring of the year, the season of rebirth and renewal, on the festival of Pesach, we read from the Song of Songs.  The poetry of nature and of love evokes, as well, the love between God and the people Israel, and their Covenant-betrothal. Arise my beloved, my fair one, And come away; For lo, the winter is past. Flowers appear on the earth, The time of singing is here. The song of the dove Is heard in our...

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THE MATZAH OF HOPE and PEACE Neal Borovitz Avadim Hayinu:  Not only were we slaves to the Pharaoh of Egypt, we have also been enslaved and persecuted by other Pharaohs.  Among these Pharaohs of every age were the Kings of Babylonia, the Emperors of Greece and Rome, the Churchmen and Nobles of Medieval Spain, Hitler and his Nazi followers, the Pharaohs of Moscow, and the dictators, potentates and terrorists of the contemporary Arab world.  The Babylonian exile was followed by a...

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For us (Ken and Gisela), the story of Pesach is a story of constant struggle at many levels: At the most basic level, struggle between security and certainty of remaining a slave in Egypt and uncertainty and potential freedom of following the path of faith. It is also a struggle between faith and doubt. Am I willing to leave everything I’ve known for the total unknown? Abandoning a known way of life for something unknown? Many Jews in Egypt remained, and...

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(Leader breaks matzah and holds up the smaller broken piece. The larger piece is set aside as the Afikomen.) LEADER: This broken matzah reminds us that our world is broken. We recall those who are poor, whose uncertainty about their future compels them to put aside the “broken half” for later use. We are shaken out of our complacency as we recall God’s words: “Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt.” Through service to others, we meet the...

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Pour the second glass of wine for everyone. The Haggadah doesn’t tell the story of Passover in a linear fashion. We don’t hear of Moses being found by the daughter of Pharaoh – actually, we don’t hear much of Moses at all. Instead, we get an impressionistic collection of songs, images, and stories of both the Exodus from Egypt and from Passover celebrations through the centuries. Some say that minimizing the role of Moses keeps us focused on the miracles God...

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The formal telling of the story of Passover is framed as a discussion with lots of questions and answers. The tradition that the youngest person asks the questions reflects the centrality of involving everyone in the seder. The rabbis who created the set format for the seder gave us the Four Questions to help break the ice in case no one had their own questions. Asking questions is a core tradition in Jewish life. If everyone at your seder is around...

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1. Why do I always have the feeling that everybody’d doing something better than me on Saturday afternoons? 2. Why would anyone eat canned fruit? 3. Why is it that the doors on the stalls do not come all the way down to the floor? 4. What was a man with a cape doing with my father? What was my father doing with a man in a cape? Why a cape?

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The Four Questions we ask at our Hunger Seder challenge us to consider what is different about this night. Only when we ask the right questions can we understand the causes of hunger and take action to end this unnecessary plight. 1. Why during this seder do we focus on hunger? Hunger remains a painful physical reality for far too many of our friends, neighbors, and family members. Hunger is an oppressive force that holds individuals back from realizing their full...

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Each year at the Seder, we ask the traditional Four Questions. And each year, MAZON asks a Fifth Question to raise awareness about a particular hunger-related issue and spark important conversations around the seder table. This year, we turn our attention to our seniors, who are aging into poverty and hunger at a rapid rate. Why is it that when we talk about aging in America, we never talk about hunger? Why is this time of life different from all other...

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Kadesh: Blessings over Cup #1 of wine and marking sacred time. Urchatz: Ritually washing hands without offering a blessing. Karpas: Eating green vegetable dipped in salt-water. Yachatz: Breaking the middle matzah (of the ceremonial 3) to create the Afikoman. Maggid: Telling the story. Why is this night different? 4 sons! 10 plagues! Enough already! Pascal lamb, matzah and bitter herb explanations. Cup #2. Rachtzah: Ritually washing hands with a blessing before breaking bread. Motzi: Blessing over bread. Matzah: Blessing over matzah....