Why is this night different from all other nights? We know the traditional answers to this question: On this night, we eat matzah and bitter herbs, we dip and we recline. But this is not all, or even most, of what Passoveris about. On most other nights, we allow the news of tragedy in distant places to pass us by. We succumb to compassion fatigue – aware that we cannot possibly respond to every injustice that arises around the world. On...

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air; And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. (IV.i.148–158)

The Pesach story begins in a broken world, amidst slavery and oppression. The sound of the breaking matzah sends us into that fractured existence, only to become whole again when we find the broken half, the afikomen, at the end of the Seder. This brokeness is not merely physical; it reminds us of all the broken places within ourselves, and of the narrow places from which we want to break free. In hebrew, Egypt is called 'Mitzrayim,' which means, 'the narrow...

The Pesach story begins in a broken world, amidst slavery and oppression. The sound of the breaking matzah sends us into that fractured existence, only to become whole again when we find the broken half, the afikomen, at the end of the Seder. This brokeness is not merely physical; it reminds us of all the broken places within ourselves, and of the narrow places from which we want to break free. In hebrew, Egypt is called 'Mitzrayim,' which means, 'the narrow...

Wild Geese- Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees,...

On Passover, Jews are commanded to tell the story of the Exodus and to see ourselves as having lived through that story, so that we may better learn how to live our lives today. The stories we tell our children shape what they believe to be possible—which is why at Passover, we must tell the stories of the women who played a crucial role in the Exodus narrative. The Book of Exodus, much like the Book of Genesis, opens in pervasive...