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Our story starts in ancient times, with Abraham, the first person to have the idea that maybe all those little statues his contemporaries worshiped as gods were just statues. The idea of one G-d, invisible and all-powerful, inspired him to leave his family and begin a new people in Canaan, the land that would one day bear his grandson Jacob’s adopted name, Israel. G-d had made a promise to Abraham that his family would become a great nation, but this promise...

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To conclude this seder, let us end with a joke, one in which will surely get a chuckle from the members of our project: Issy is a very wealthy man and for his mother’s birthday he goes to a Sotheby’s sale and buys her a very expensive painting. When he gets back home, he can’t wait to phone to tell her what he’s bought for her. "Hi, mum, it’s me, Issy, your number one son, your boychik."  "Oh (pause) is everything...

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Passover, like many Jewish holidays, combines the celebration of an event from Jewish memory with a recognition of the cycles of nature. As we remember the liberation from Egypt, we also recognize the stirrings of spring and rebirth happening in the world around us. The symbols on our table bring together elements of both kinds of celebration. We now take a vegetable, representing our joy at the dawning of spring after our long, cold winter. Most families use a green vegetable,...

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Water is refreshing, cleansing, and clear, so it’s easy to understand why so many cultures and religions use water for symbolic purification. We will wash our hands twice during our seder: now, with no blessing, to get us ready for the rituals to come; and then again later, we’ll wash again with a blessing, preparing us for the meal, which Judaism thinks of as a ritual in itself.  To wash your hands, you don’t need soap, but you do need a...

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As we now transition from the formal telling of the Passover story to the celebratory meal, we once again wash our hands to prepare ourselves. In Judaism, a good meal together with friends and family is itself a sacred act, so we prepare for it just as we prepared for our holiday ritual, recalling the way ancient priests once prepared for service in the Temple. Some people distinguish between washing to prepare for prayer and washing to prepare for food by...

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Finding and eating the Afikomen | tzafoon | צָפוּן The playfulness of finding the afikomen reminds us that under normal circumstances, we balance our solemn memories of slavery with a joyous celebration of freedom. When we eat the afikomen, our last taste of matzah for the evening, we are grateful for moments of silliness and happiness in our lives. Tonight, at this seder, we choose to not eat the afikomen, out of respect for the work to come in our quest...

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"Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision." —Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1970

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We have now told the story of Passover…but wait! We’re not quite done. There are still some symbols on our seder plate we haven’t talked about yet. Rabban Gamliel would say that whoever didn’t explain the shank bone, matzah, and marror (or bitter herbs) hasn’t done Passover justice. The shank bone represents the Pesach, the special lamb sacrifice made in the days of the Temple for the Passover holiday. It is called the pesach, from the Hebrew word meaning “to pass...

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Nirtzah marks the conclusion of the seder. Our bellies are full, we have had several glasses of wine, we have told stories and sung songs, and now it is time for the evening to come to a close. At the end of the seder, we honor the tradition of declaring, “Next year in Jerusalem!” To some, "Next year in Jerusalem!" is an affirmation of hope and of connectedness with Klal Yisrael, the whole of the Jewish community. Still others perceive in...

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We begin our service in the remembrance of the Holocaust in silence. Let us surround our worship, our community in prayer, with silence in preparation for the presence of G-d. Silence does not just bring to a standstill words and noise. Silence is more than the temporary renunciation of speech. It is a door opening before prayer, toward the very realms of the spirit and the heart. Silence is the beginning of a reckoning of the soul, the prelude to an...

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We have now told the story of Passover…but wait! We’re not quite done. There are still some symbols on our seder plate we haven’t talked about yet. Rabban Gamliel would say that whoever didn’t explain the shank bone, matzah, and marror (or bitter herbs) hasn’t done Passover justice. The shank bone represents the Pesach, the special lamb sacrifice made in the days of the Temple for the Passover holiday. It is called the pesach, from the Hebrew word meaning “to pass...

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The formal telling of the story of Passover is framed as a discussion with lots of questions and answers. The tradition that the youngest person asks the questions reflects the centrality of involving everyone in the seder. The rabbis who created the set format for the seder gave us the Four Questions to help break the ice in case no one had their own questions. Asking questions is a core tradition in Jewish life. If everyone at your seder is around...