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What happened to the tortoise? The tortoise, the tortoise A breadfruit fell on the tortoise The tortoise, the tortoise What happened to the breadfruit? The tortoise, the tortoise A stake pierced the breadfruit The tortoise, the tortoise What happened to the staff? The tortoise, the tortoise Termite ate up the staff The tortoise, the tortoise What happened to the termite? The tortoise, the tortoise A fowl ate the termite The tortoise, the tortoise What happened to the fowl? The tortoise, the...

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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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Korech:  Mixing the Bitter and the SweetOne of my favorite moments of the seder comes just before dinner is served.  It is called Korech.  It is also known as the Hillel sandwich.  It is the moment when we eat maror (the bitter herbs) and the charoset (the sweet apple and nut mixture) on a piece of matzah.  What a strange custom to eat something so bitter and something so sweet all in one bite.  I can taste it now, just thinking...

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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...

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Our sages took some pains to ensure a Jewish calendar in which Pesach would always fall in the spring. (They were operating in a northern hemisphere context; I don’t think the challenges of antipodean Judaism ever occurred to them.) In the northern hemisphere, Pesach is inextricably connected with spring. As the earth shakes off the constrictions of winter, her frozen places thawing, so we remember our shaking-off the yoke of slavery to Pharaoh. As plant life and trees are “reborn” into...

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Pesach is a time of inclusion. On seder night, there are two moments where we metaphorically open our doors and invite others in. One is at the opening of the Magid portion of the seder, when we say, “All who are hungry come and eat.” There is a beautiful message here: we were once slaves; poor and hungry, and we remember our redemption by sharing what we have with others. The other, comes towards the end of the seder, when we...

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If we were to end a single genocide, but not stop the wars that kill people as we sit here. it would not be sufficient If we were to end those bloody wars, but not disarm the nations it would not be sufficient If we were to disarm the nations, but not prevent some people from starving while others wallowed in luxury it would not be sufficient If we were to make sure that no person starved, but we were not...

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Arami Oved Avi אֲרַמִי אבֵֹד אָבִי, וַיֵרֶׁד מִצְרַיְמָה, וַיָגָר שָם בִמְתֵי מְעָט . Deuteronomy 26:1-10 My ancestor was a refugee Aramean. He descended to Egypt and resided there in small numbers. There, he became a great nation, powerful and vast. The Egyptians persecuted us, and battered us, giving us severe labors. We cried out to God, who is god to our ancestors, and then God heard our voice. God saw our suffering, toil, and oppression. God took us out of Egypt...

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The great sage Hillel provided us with the tradition of constructing the Hillel sandwich, combining the bitterness of the maror with the sweetness of the charoset between the fortitude of the two pieces of matzah--the symbol of freedom. Through this ritual, we think about mortar and brick. We think of the Israelites traveling through the desert with no homes, no place to land and build up their strong communities, and only the matzah as a reminder of their freedom. It is...

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Standing on the parted shores of history we still believe what we were taught before ever we stood at Sinai’s foot; that wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt; that there is a better place, a promised land; that the winding way to that promise passes through the wilderness that there is no way to get from here to there except by joining hands, marching together.

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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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Three thousand years ago, a farmer arose in the Middle East who challenged the ruling elite. In his passionate advocacy for common people, Elijah created a legend which would inspire generations to come. Elijah declared that he would return once each generation in the guise of someone poor or oppressed, coming to people's doors to see how he would be treated. Thus would he know whether or not humanity had become ready to participate in the dawn of the Messianic age....