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At all other סדרים, our minds can be full of stressful anticipation for the night different from all other nights, whether we are surrounded by our nearest and dearest, our friends, or complete strangers. Tonight, may we enjoy a calming and empowering evening surrounded by our "sisters". At all other סדרים, we can be concerned about food- whether we have eaten too much or too little, whether people find what we've prepared tasty, how we're going to survive the sheer quantities...

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Our final cup of wine is for the statement ‘And He gathered us to Him’ Today we gather together as women, seeking support, sustenance and inspiration for one another. Women have gathered together throughout the ages to be with one another in good times and in bad. The final cup is dedicated to women who give of themselves to other women and create a sisterhood. Drink the Fourth cup of wine

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A close reading of the beginning of Exodus shows that a number of women were involved in bringing about the redemption.● Shifra & Puah, the midwives,(Jewish or Egyptian?) refused to fulfill Pharoah’s command to kill the newborn Jewish boys. Their “excuse” - The Jewish women give birth early & naturally, without needing midwives. They utilize Pharoah’s fear of the Jews that reproduce so greatly as animals, to excuse themselves. They “feared G-d” (his moral law) more than the feared the almighty...

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By Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Rabbi Lauren Holzblatt On Passover, Jews are commanded to tell the story of the Exodus and to see ourselves as having lived through that story, so that we may better learn how to live our lives today. The stories we tell our children shape what they believe to be possible—which is why at Passover, we must tell the stories of the women who played a crucial role in the Exodus narrative. The Book of Exodus,...

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by Stosh Cotler I had danced for D before- a leather butch who came into my club with her old school, high femme wife and their entourage. That particular night, the Saturday before Passover, I sat with their crew after my table dance for D, and was shocked when D’s lover started talking about Seder arrangements. Immediately, I outed myself as a Jew, which caused a huge burst of excitement at the table- imagine the odds, not only of randomly running...

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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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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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Dipping the bitter herb in sweet charoset |  maror   |מָרוֹר   We recognize that even though we are so grateful for our journeys toward liberation, and that we experience so much joy through the process of freeing ourselves, there are also many parts of the journey that are difficult and unpleasant.We acknowledge the mixture of pleasant and unpleasant experiences by mixing bitter and sweet flavors as we eat the maror with charoset.ברוּךְ אַתָּה יְיַָ אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ מֶֽלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָֽׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּֽנוּ עַל...

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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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1. Hannah Senesh was a Hungarian Jew, one of 37 Jews who lived in the British Mandate for Palestine (now Israel), who were trained by the British army to parachute into Yugoslavia during the Second World War in order to help save the Jews of Hungary, who were about to be deported to the German death camp at Auschwitz. 2. Senesh was arrested at the Hungarian border, imprisoned and tortured, but she refused to reveal details of her mission and was...

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http://girlsintrouble.bandcamp.com/track/applesOriginal song based on the famous midrash about the israelite women saving the tribe by seducing their husbands beneath the apple trees when pharaoh had made them too tired for procreation

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Traditionally, we ask why this night is different from all other nights. This variation on the Four Questions challenges us to think about why some things have changed so little:1) Why is “JAP” still such a popular put-down?2) When women make up the majority of Jewish professionals, why are most Jewish communal organizations still led by men?3) When will people stop thinking it’s only important for girls – and not boys – to learn about Jewish women’s history?4) Why on this...

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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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by Mark Silverman     My early years immersed me in a Judaism of male dominance in life and at the seder table, inevitably enticing me to gulp my glasses of real wine as a way of dulling the scene, blurring the edges, until the final songs sent me off to bed in a not unpleasant stupor. Dayenu! Later, still a child but more aware, I saw the family kowtow to my father, a Yeshiva boy who went secular except for a few...