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Sweet mother I’m coming home  Now I know I’m not alone  Cause I’ve been far  Now I’m close  Sweet mother I’m coming home  Tell me mother can you hear me sing  Your love is everything  Heart and soul  Breath and skin  Your love is everything  Oh mother, please hold me tight  Cause mother I need some help tonight  What went wrong  Will soon be right  Oh mother, please hold me tight  Tell me mother can you hear me sing  Your love...

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This symbolic washing of the hands recalls the story of Miriam's Well. Legend tells us that this well followed Miriam, sister of Moses, through the desert, sustaining the Jews in their wanderings. Filled with mayim chayim, waters of life, the well was a source of strength and renewal to all who drew from it. One drink from its waters was said to alert the heart, mind and soul, and make the meaning of Torah become alive. As we prepare to wash...

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By: Rabbi Ari Weiss At the close of the Haggadah, after moving from past humiliations to future hopes, a surprise! A piyut, or liturgical poem, first quoted in Sefer Rokeach (1160-1238), that returns to the Haggadic theme of retribution but on a deeper, more fundamental register. Nature is a "war of all against all."[1]  The cat that attacks is attacked just as the Egyptians who oppressed are oppressed. "Nature red in tooth and claw."[2]  And so it goes. Violence always escalating,...

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http://girlsintrouble.bandcamp.com/track/snow-scorpions-and-spidersA song about Miriam, but later in her life, from the book of Numbers Chapter 12, when she's exiled from the group for a while. 

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Who can say we’ve actually left? “Wherever you live, it is probably Egypt,” Michael Walzer wrote. Do you live in a place where some people work two and three jobs to feed their children, and others don’t even have a single, poorly paid job? Do you live in a community in which the rich are fabulously rich, and the poor humiliated and desperate? Do you live among people who worship the golden calves of obsessive acquisitiveness, among people whose children are...

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Slaves eat quickly, stopping neither to wash nor to reflect. Tonight, we are free. We wash and we express our reverence for the blessings that are ours. Pass a bowl of water, a small cup and a towel around the table. Everyone pours three cupfuls over their fingers. There is no blessing over this washing.

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The top MatzohAnd bottom Matzoh are,it is said,Pesach substitutesFor the two loaves of challah on Shabbat,Supposedly a reminderOf the two portions of mannaThey received  in the dessertEvery Friday before Shabbat. But the middle matza?!Ah,That's for the seder.We break it in halfAnd call it the bread of affliction,Just like the unleavened breadWe ate as we fled slavery Matza Number Two,The afflicted matza, We break it in halfAnd separate ourselves from joySo we don't forget the painThat has been ours.We break it in...

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The Shehecheyanu is a prayer that Jews have been saying for over 2000 years to mark special occasions. Tonight, all of us here together is special occasion. Whether Jewish or not, we have come here under a shared belief that everyone is entitled to be free. We all believe that everyone is entitled to certain inalienable rights. We all believe that we must treat our brothers and sisters with common decency. That is special and meaningful. To mark this special and...

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Touch Me by Stanley Kunitz Summer is late, my heart. Words plucked out of the air some forty years ago when I was wild with love and torn almost in two scatter like leaves this night of whistling wind and rain. It is my heart that's late, it is my song that's flown. Outdoors all afternoon under a gunmetal sky staking my garden down, I kneeled to the crickets trilling underfoot as if about to burst from their crusty shells; and...

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Be Our Guest! Be Our Guest! Put our seder to the test! All you have to do is come on in And we’ll provide the rest. Here’s some wine in a cup! Just recline and drink it up! It will be your favorite flavor If it’s Concord grape you favor! Life is sweet!  Life is good! When you’re in our neighborhood! And when you are here Elijah we are blessed! Just park your golden chariot You don’t need a Marriott! Be...