{ "clip_details": { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "mitzrayim-here-and-now", "title": "Mitzrayim Here and Now", "author": "e heimberg", "author_handle": "eheimberg", "author_initials": "EH", "covertext": "Each year there are moments when the earth trembles, a seismic event or series of events that changes the very nature of...", "user_image": "", "user_image_original": "", "body": "<p>Each year there are moments when the earth trembles, a seismic event or series of events that changes the very nature of how we view our world, our nation, and our communities.  We, who place ourselves into this story each year, cannot look at these moments without being profoundly affected by an inner voice that says, ‘This is Mitzrayim here and now.’</p>\n\n\n\n<p>In March of this year the Justice Department of the United States issued two reports regarding the shooting of an unarmed black man, Michael Brown August 9, 2014 in Ferguson Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many media outlets focused on the report clearing the officer involved of civil rights violations in the shooting.  There was, however, a second report; a scathing indictment of </p>\n\n<p>rampant racial bias in the town’s municipal and law enforcement systems.   </p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Washington Post reported federal investigators determined that in “nearly every aspect of Ferguson’s law enforcement system,” African Americans are impacted a severely disproportionate amount. The report included racist e-mails sent by police and municipal court supervisors, repeated examples of bias in law enforcement and a system that seemed built upon using arrest warrants to squeeze money out of residents.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Key excerpts in the report detailed in the Washington Post include:</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 67% of African Americans in Ferguson account for 93% of arrests made from 2012-2014.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The disproportionate number of arrests, tickets and use of force stemmed from “unlawful bias,” rather than black people committing more crime.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>From October 2012 to October 2014, every time a person was arrested because he or she was “resisting arrest,” that person was black.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>The city’s practices are shaped by revenue rather than by public safety needs.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A Ferguson woman parked her car illegally once in 2007. It ended up costing her more than $1,000 and 6 days in jail.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>A singled missed, late or partial payment of a fine could mean jail time.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Arrest warrants are “almost exclusively” used as threats to push for payments.</p>\n\n\n\n<p>And if time is served, no credit for jail time is received and the length of time isn’t even recorded by the court.</p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>How is this event tied in to our Seder tonight?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>Is this one isolated event?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What is required of us?</p>\n\n\n\n<p>What other moments from the past year have rocked your world?</p>\n", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Esther Heimberg", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Introduction", "slug": "introduction" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 218, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Mitzrayim Here and Now | Passover haggadah by e heimberg", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/mitzrayim-here-and-now", "og:title": "Mitzrayim Here and Now | Passover haggadah by e heimberg", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, "contributed_by": { "author": "e heimberg", "handle": "eheimberg", "author_initials": "EH", "total_books": 4, "total_clips": 4, "total_followers": 0, "is_following": 0 }, "user_book": null, "clips_by_author": [ { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "why-there-no-orange-our-seder-plate", "title": "Why is there no orange on our Seder Plate", "author": "e heimberg", "author_handle": "eheimberg", "author_initials": "EH", "covertext": "Why is there no orange on our Seder plate?      In the early 1980s, while speaking at Oberlin College Hillel, Susannah H...", "user_image": "", "user_image_original": "", "body": "<strong>Why is there no orange on our Seder plate?     </strong>\n\n<p>In the early 1980s, while speaking at Oberlin College Hillel, Susannah Heschel was introduced to an early feminist Haggadah that suggested adding a crust of bread on the Seder plate, as a sign of solidarity with Jewish lesbians (there's as much room for a lesbian in Judaism as there is for a crust of bread on the seder plate). Heschel felt that to put bread on the Seder plate would be to accept that Jewish lesbians and gay men violate Judaism like chametz violates Passover. So, at her next Seder, she chose an orange as a symbol of inclusion of gays and lesbians and others who are marginalized within the Jewish community. She offered the orange as a symbol of the fruitfulness for all Jews when lesbians and gay men are contributing and active members of Jewish life.  This story evolved to the urban legend that a rabbi said to Heschel that a woman on the bimah is as out of place as an orange on a Seder plate.  In remembrance, some began to place an orange on their Seder plate.  We did as well for a few years.</p>\n\n<p>Several years ago I had the opportunity to create my own Seder plate. Through the clay in my hands I had the awesome power to decide to stay with or break from tradition in a lasting way.  Is there a way to break tradition yet honor it at the same time?  My goal was to maintain the ideals and values that the generations before me held dear and  interpret them in a way that demonstrates their transcendent nature; to clarify that they endure in each generation. </p>\n\n<p>Martin Buber writes:</p>\n\n<p><strong>Tradition constitutes the noblest  freedom for a generation that lives it meaningfully, but it is the most miserable slavery for habitual inheritors who merely accept it, tenaciously and complacently.</strong></p>\n\n<p>Balancing the desire to honor tradition or institute change  is a dynamic struggle we face on regular basis  particularly at momentous occasions.</p>\n\n<p>You will find on our family plate there is a dish with the Hebrew word <em>Makom</em> meaning place.  <em>Hamakom</em>, literally ‘the place’, is an ancient name for God.  It is meant to represent the ideal that there is a place at our table, a prominent place, for all; that no group should be marginalized as there is a spark of God in each of us. It is an opening, an opportunity for conversation.</p>\n\n<p>We have committed vegetarians in our household; the opportunity to omit a place for meat was  promising.  The <em>mitzvah</em> is to remember the sacrifice, so the Hebrew word <em>Pesach</em>  (offering) is on the dish on which we place the roasted beet in remembrance of the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb. </p>\n\n<p>The plates sit side by side; the inspiration and the interpretation. </p>\n\n<p>- Esther Heimberg, Congregation Beth El of the Sudbury River Valley</p>\n\n\n", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Original, introduction (describing the origin of the orange) culled from multiple sources", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Introduction", "slug": "introduction" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 273, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Why is there no orange on our Seder Plate | Passover haggadah by e heimberg", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/why-there-no-orange-our-seder-plate", "og:title": "Why is there no orange on our Seder Plate | Passover haggadah by e heimberg", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "miriams-cup-3", "title": "Miriam's Cup", "author": "e heimberg", "author_handle": "eheimberg", "author_initials": "EH", "covertext": "Legend tells us that Miriam found the wells that kept us alive during the forty years we wandered in the wilderness befo...", "user_image": "", "user_image_original": "", "body": "<p><span>Legend tells us that Miriam found the wells that kept us alive during the forty years we wandered in the wilderness before we came to the Promised Land.   Miriam’s Well was said to hold Divine power to heal and renew.  It became a special source of transformation for a people seeking to leave slavery behind them and form a new identity.   Throughout our journey as a people, we have sought to rediscover these <em>mayim khayyim</em>, living waters for ourselves.</span></p><p><span> </span><span>Elijah’s Cup, which we speak of at the end of the Seder, represents our future redemption, looking forward to the time of the Messiah when peace will fill the world.</span><span>  </span><span>Miriam’s Cup is a symbol of our past redemption when our people were brought out of Egypt and delivered from slavery.</span></p><p><span> </span><span>We are still on the journey.</span><span>  </span><span>Just as the Holy One delivered Miriam and her people, just as they were sustained in the desert and transformed until they became a new people, so may we be delivered, sustained and transformed on our own journey to a stronger sense of ourselves as individuals and as one people.</span></p>", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Kol Isha P.O. Box 132 Wayland ,MA", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": null, "slug": null } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 227, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Miriam's Cup | Passover haggadah by e heimberg", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "keywords": "", "og:type": "article", "og:url": "https://www.haggadot.com/clip/miriams-cup-3", "og:title": "Miriam's Cup | Passover haggadah by e heimberg", "og:description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. Find artwork, family", "og:image": "" } } }, { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "technology-rocks", "title": "Technology Rocks", "author": "e heimberg", "author_handle": "eheimberg", "author_initials": "EH", "covertext": "Technology Rocks!Dissatisfied with traditional Haggadot, I have been editing a family Hagaddah each year since the early...", "user_image": "", "user_image_original": "", "body": "<p style=\"text-align:center;\"><span>Technology Rocks!</span></p><p><span>Dissatisfied with traditional Haggadot, I have been editing a family Hagaddah each year since the early 90’s!  Well, as technology changed so did the process of compiling and editing the Hagaddah!   In the early years, cut and paste meant scissors and glue!  Sources were all books; we are talking pre-Google; it was exiting to have a computer and a printer!</span></p><p><span> </span><span>Imagine how exciting it is this year to be part of The Neverending Hagaddah; an online community crowd-sourced Hagaddah.</span><span>  </span><span>People all over the world who are committed to telling the story of Passover gather on-line bringing cutting edge technology to an age old story; an innovation that not only transcends location but time- contributors share source materials dating</span><span>  </span><span>back centuries, today’s contributions spread into the cloud. This on-line project has created opportunity to not only search through thousands of clips from a vast array of traditional and contemporary sources but to add original contributions.</span></p><p><span> </span><span>There is just something wondrous reenacting a ritual done by past generations for hundreds of years.</span><span>  </span><span>It is through these rituals that Judaism does not become one of those lost cultures we study in museums, but remains a vibrant</span><span>  </span><span>way of viewing and engaging in the world.</span><span>  </span><span>It is amazing to fuse the most modern form of communication with ancient ritual; storytelling and social media side by side with a common goal, each inspiring the other.</span><span> </span></p><p><span> </span><span>While studying at the Hartman Institute during Passover 2005, there was an interpretation of the purpose Hagaddah that was particularly fascinating; that, rather than being created to read cover to cover at the Passover table, it was designed to be an instruction guide for the leader.</span><span>  </span><span>At a time when books were rare, literacy rates may have been low, and there were no schools of education, directions as to how to create a memorable and instructional ‘class’ were important.</span><span>  </span><span>A list of the 14 steps or syllabus/course outline is first, suggestions of unusual activities such as dipping vegetables and leaning on pillows were included as examples to encourage young children to participate and ask questions. Descriptions of the different types of learners, and multi-sensory techniques to adapt to individual learning styles are all part of the oldest form of the Hagaddah.</span><span>  </span><span>So, it can be said that including contemporary writings, specifically included to make the experience more personal, for we are instructed to say that we ourselves were liberated from Egypt, may be exactly what the authors had in mind in the first place.</span></p><p><span>The link from generation to generation is only as strong as the weakest link.  At times, for various reasons, the links are quite fragile, and, once broken, they must be sought  out, much like an Afikomen  hidden at a Seder held long ago.  Where the links are strong, for each holiday there is a memory of the food, the people, the rituals.  There are stories; funny, tragic, mesmerizing  which connect the past to the present and in the telling, the present to the future.  For our generation this Neverending Hagaddah strengthens an important link.</span></p><p><span> </span><span>As Jews, our history is not tied</span><span>  </span><span>to one specific place or country- we were scattered to the four corners of the earth.</span><span>  </span><span>In the diaspora we struggle with the dynamic tension of assimilating yet keeping a portion of our identity set apart.</span><span>  </span><span>When we are successful in keeping that separation we maintain vital</span><span>  </span><span>connections with those scattered people the world over who are sitting around a table in celebration- as we are this night, recounting the story of the Exodus, in Ladino, Russian, Amharic, Polish... </span></p>", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Original, introduction (describing the origin of the orange) culled from multiple sources", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Introduction", "slug": "introduction" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 215, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "Technology Rocks | Passover haggadah by e heimberg", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. 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