The Ballad of the Four Sons (to the tune of "Clementine") Said the father to his children, "At the seder you will dine, You will eat your fill of matzoh, you will drink four cups of wine." Now this father had no daughters, but his sons they numbered four. One was wise and one was wicked, one was simple and a bore. And the fourth was sweet and winsome, he was young and he was small. While his brothers asked the...

THE CUP OF DELIVERANCE - We raise our cups as we recall the second promise of liberation to the people of Israel. Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, borei p'ri ha-gafen. Praised be thou, O Lord Our God, King of the Universe, who creates the fruit of the vine! All drink the entire second cup of wine

Once Upon a Time... The story of Passover is a story of miracles, of redemption, and of the mighty power of G-d to overcome evil. The L-rd had promised the land of Israel to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But their children were in Egypt, enslaved by a Pharaoh who had feared that these numerous foreigners would join with his enemies and turn against him! His solution was to control them by imposing harsh and bitter slavery upon them. Still, G-d blessed...

Leader: The Torah tells us that there are four kinds of children to whom the story of Pesach must be told in four different ways. The wicked child asks: “Why keep this old fashioned custom? What does it mean to you? To you, not to him.” Because this child takes himself out of the collective body, this child does not feel himself part of the community. We will tell him: Cong: “It is because of what God did for me when...

We do not rejoice at suffering. However, in order to gain our freedom, the Egyptians had to suffer. All of us are human beings made in the image of the Eternal. It is said that when the Red Sea closed over the pursuing Egyptian troops, the angels rejoiced until Adonai rebuked them: “Do not rejoice! Those are my children as well!” In the same way, we should regret what had to be done to the Egyptians that we might be made...

Passover 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, in this case parsley, to represent our joy at the dawning of spring after our long, cold winter. Whatever symbol of spring and...

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 his one God, 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. God had made a promise to Abraham that his family would become a great nation, but this...

The story of the Exodus has been told to us by our parents, just as their parents told them. We now repeat the story in hopes that this will pass on to the next generation. The ancient Hebrews came to Egypt from their land to get provisions during a famine. They became a favored group in Egypt and prospered and multiplied there. Legend tells us that our ancestor Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers, became valuable to Pharaoh...

It saddens us that any struggle for freedom involves suffering. Generally, we drink wine to rejoice. Therefore, for each plague we take out a drop of wine from our cup. This way we do not rejoice over the suffering of others. The plagues that, we are told, afflicted the Egyptians were: (Take a drop of wine out of your cup for each plague) - blood - frogs - vermin -beasts - boils - cattle disease - locusts - hail - darkness...