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The traditional Haggadah lists ten plagues that afflicted the Egyptians. We live in a very different world, but Passover is a good time to remember that, even after our liberation from slavery in Egypt, there are still many challenges for us to meet. Here are ten “modern plagues”:Inequity - Access to affordable housing, quality healthcare, nutritious food, good schools, and higher education is far from equal. The disparity between rich and poor is growing, and opportunities for upward mobility are limited....

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Quien, quien, quien, como Jehová? Que con su poder el mar abrió. Oirán las naciones lo que El hizo, Oirán dondé quiera sus prodigios, Su pueblo le cantara, con panderos danzarán, Y dirán quién, quién, como Jehová. _________________________ ּעֲבָדִים הָיִינוּ הָיִינו. עַתָּה בְּנֵי חוֹרִין Avadim hayinu hayinu. Ata b’nei chorin. We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. Now we are free.

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The central imperative of the Seder is to tell the story. The Bible instructs: “ You shall tell your child on that day, saying: ‘This is because of what Adonai did for me when I came out of Egypt.' ” (Exodus 13:8) We relate the story of our ancestors to regain the memories as our own. Elie Weisel writes: God created man because He loves stories. We each have a story to tell — a story of enslavement, struggle, liberation. Be...

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"For me, the recent meaning of Passover in my life has been a reclaiming of the seder ceremony away from the patriarchal tradition. My children may remember the seders of their early childhood, conducted by their grandfather entirely in Hebrew, incomprehensible to most in attendance, unvarying from year to year, except for how long it took until the children were sent away from the table for giggling. Before that, there were the Vietnam-era seders when we got into fights with relatives...

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Long ago, Pharaoh ruled the land of Egypt. He enslaved the Jewish people and made them work very hard building his cities.   song: Bang bang bang Phaoraoh was especially cruel to Jewish children. One mother hid her baby, Moses, in a basket in the river. Pharoah's daughter found him and took him home to live in the palace. Moses grew up. He saw the slaves working so hard. He had a fight about it and ran away to be a shepherd....

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In Syria, instead of breaking the middle matzah in half, they break it into the shape of the Hebrew letters daled and vav, which correspond to numbers adding up to 10, representing the 10 Holy Emanations of G-d.

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The Four Questions we ask at our Hunger Seder challenge us to consider what is different about this night. Only when we ask the right questions can we understand the causes of hunger and take action to end this unnecessary plight. 1. Why during this seder do we focus on hunger? Hunger remains a painful physical reality for far too many of our friends, neighbors, and family members. Hunger is an oppressive force that holds individuals back from realizing their full...

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As we celebrate the Jewish people’s biblical exodus from Egypt, we remember that there are 60 million displaced people around the world, people fleeing violence and persecution in search of a safe place to call home. We are currently in the midst of the worst refugee crisis since World War II. HIAS, the world’s oldest, and only Jewish, refugee resettlement organization, helps refugees find ways to live in safety and with dignity as we also mobilize the Jewish community’s response to...

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The Sounds of Yiddish Robin Becker Splat like matzoh broken and dropped in the egg-milk mix for matzohbrei. They knock you deep in the kishkes. They smart—kine ahora—with the schtick of the canny mensch who knows schlock when she sees it. Hear that rumbling across Ukraine? Yiddish ran from a posse of hazards when my Bubbe left her shtetl, Russians at her back and a mongrel, Middle High German in her mouth. A language is a dialect with an army and...

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The practice of placing an orange on one’s seder plate affirms women’s place in the history and observance of Passover; it also affirms women’s inclusion as full-fledged liturgical participants, not just in the seder ritual, but in all areas of Judaism. Here is an early telling of the narrative: According to feminist scholar Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, when a jewish women’s group at UC Berkeley once invited the Chabad House rebbetzin (rabbi’s wife) to speak, they asked her about the place of...

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Tonight we have acknowledged our ancestors. We vow that we will not allow their stories, their experiences, their wisdom to fade. These are our legacy, which we will study and teach to our friends and children. The task of liberation is long, and it is work we ourselves must do. As it is written in Pirke Avot, a collection of rabbinic wisdom: “It is not incumbent upon us to finish the task, but neither may we refrain from beginning it.”