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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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In washing our hands, we also think of those who don't get to share in the basic human right of abundant, clean water of people deprived of water by the weather in Somalia, in India, in Texas and those deprived of water by human action in places like Flint, Michigan as well as those whose homes have been ravaged by wind and water in Colombia, in California, and here in New Jersey. We wash our hands and accept our responsibilities to...

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After performing most of the central mitzvot of the evening (telling the story of the Exodus eating matza and maror, etc.) and just before we are about to enjoy the festive holiday meal, the haggadah structures a moment in which we symbolically repeat the practice of Hillel the Elder who would “wrap” his portion of the paschal offering with matza and maror and eat it as a type of sandwich, in literal fulfillment of the verse “it shall be eaten on...

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The karpas, the green vegetable, is the first part of the seder that makes this night different from all other nights. So far, the first glass of wine and the hand washing, though significant, do not serve to mark any sort of difference; they are regular parts of meals. The karpas, however, is not. As a night marked by difference, that difference starts now. Tonight, we celebrate difference with the karpas. Here, difference brings us hope, joy, and renewed life. We...

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"A Not-So-Serious Passover Play for the Classroom or the Dining Room" by S. Mitchell CHARACTERS: Slave Narrator, G_d (as a voice offstage), Moses, Aaron, Burning Bush, Pharoah SLAVE NARRATOR: In Egypt we Hebrews had a difficult life. All day we worked under the whips of the taskmasters, making bricks and stacking them into giant pyramids, using nothing but our bare hands and a mixture of apples, raisins and nuts to bind the bricks together. We ate nothing but horseradish and drank...

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As you bless the four cups of wine and remember the different ways God protected the Children of Israel during their exodus from Egypt, offer these words of blessing for the ways we can stand in support of today’s refugees as they journey to safety. This is the first of the blessings over the four cups of wine that we say throughout the Passover Seder. You will find the other three blessings interspersed throughout this supplement. I will free you...  As...

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By Rabbi Melissa Klein, Rabbi Joanna Katz, Rabbi Julie Greenberg, Rabbi Jo Hirschmann, Susan Kaplow, Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell This year, we add a padlock and a key to our seder plate. Those of us who are blessed to live in our own homes tend to associate locks and keys with protection and access. Many of us have homes that keep us safe and that allow us to go in and out as we please. In contrast, for more than two...

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By Rabbi Tamara Cohen We sit down for our seders this year at a powerful cultural moment when the voices of women and girls are rising – the collective activism of #metoo, Emma Gonzales’s six minutes of silence and 11-year-old African American Naomi Wadler’s speech at the March for Our Lives, and even the truth telling of Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels. All this makes the absence of women’s voices in the Passover Haggadah more glaring. Thirty years ago,...

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By: Rabbi Ari Weiss As we approach Berach and reflect and give thanks to God for the meal we recently consumed, let us pause for a moment and reflect on what a Jewish meal is. Having a meal according to the Jewish tradition is much richer and more complex then just consuming food. As William H. Gass [1]  has noted, as animals we desire only nourishment. However, in the process of eating, other things happen. The desire to have food is...