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Rumi, the Persian poet of the soul, understands the meaning of love in this way:             Your task is not to seek love             But merely to seek and find all the barriers             That you have built against it.             The same can be said of freedom; we build barriers against it, barriers born of fear-fear of death, fear of not having enough, fear of not being enough, fear of being happy. An antidote to these fears is gratefulness; when we cultivate our awareness...

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NARRATOR 1 (10 LINES)NARRATOR 2 (13 LINES)PHARAOH (15 LINES)SLAVE (2 LINES)HERALD (1 LINE)MOSES (8 LINES)GOD (7 LINES)PHARAOH’S SON (2 LINES)AARON (12 LINES)SHEEP (2 LINES)YOCHEVED (1 LINE)PRINCESS (4 LINES)PRINCESS’S ATTENDANT (4 LINES)MIRIAM (4 LINES) NARRATOR 1: The story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt has been told thousands of times. It’s a reminder to the Jewish people that once we were slaves in Egypt, but now we are free. And so, this year, as in years before, generation upon generation, we...

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The Partisan Song (or Partizaner Lid) is the name of a Yiddish song considered one of the chief anthems of Shoah survivors. The lyrics of the song were written in 1943 by Hirsh Glick, a young Jewish inmate of the Vilna Ghetto. The title means "Never Say", and derives from the first line of the song, "Never say that you have reached the final road." During World War II, "Zog Nit Keynmol" was adopted by a number of Jewish partisan groups...

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The answers to the first three questions are drawn from Michelle Alexander’s groundbreaking book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010). Excerpts are cited with “NJC” and the page number. Question #1 Why does America have the highest incarceration rate of any developed nation in the world? Many factors have increased the incarceration rate, including the War on Drugs, the imposition of mandatory minimum sentencing, and privatization of prisons, which creates financial incentives for keeping people...

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Our tradition speaks of four children or four attitudes: the wise child, the wicked child, the simple child, and the one who does not know how to ask. Each child has a different reaction to hearing about slavery. . . What does the wise child say? “What are the testimonies, the statutes, and the laws that apply to this situation? How are we to discern what God demands of us?” You are to answer this child: “God brought us out of...

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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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no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well. no one would leave home unless home chased you, fire under feet, hot blood in your belly. it's not something you ever thought about doing, and so when you did - you carried the anthem under your breath, waiting until the airport toilet to tear up the passport and swallow, each mouthful of paper...

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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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The fact that many do not know the true story of the orange on the Seder plate shows how sometimes even groups working for equality (in this case, feminists) end up erasing or ignoring the contributions of other marginalized groups. This can happen when feminists ignore the struggles of transgender and queer people facing homophobia or transphobia, or people of color facing racism. Or when LGBTQ communities ignore the realities of people facing ableism (discrimination against people with disabilities). This is...

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The 2nd Cup Now is the time to drink again from our wine or grape juice, remembering our responsibility to oppose oppression where we find it. Sometimes, we have to take a good, hard look at ourselves, our own families, our own cultures, and our own countries to ask, “Can something we are doing be thought of as oppressing someone else? Moses grew up in a palace with servants and privilege. It must have been very difficult for him to look...

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In vegetarian homes, the roasted shank bone is sometimes replaced with olives, which represents the olive branch, an international symbol of peace.