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K S

Commentary / Readings

excerpt from "Home" by Warsan Shire

by K S

no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger than his body you only leave home when home won't let you stay. no one leaves home unless home chases you fire...

-- Cup #2 & Dayenu

Dayenu from AJWS

by K S

Dayenu recalls every step in our path to redemption: departure from Egypt, the splitting of the sea, sustenance in the wilderness, the giving of the Torah and our arrival in the land of Israel. And although we express gratitude for each moment by saying, “It would have been enough,” we know that all of these steps were necessary to achieve full freedom. Had the journey ended with the leaving of Egypt, we would not be free people. As today’s freedom-seekers depart...

Kadesh from AJWS

by K S

Tonight, we gather around the Seder table to recount the ancient Israelites’ miraculous transformation from slavery to freedom. Their story began with an awakening: As our tradition teaches, Moses saw the burning bush and recognized that he was called to liberate his people from Egypt. Our journey, too, begins with an awakening: May this first cup of wine rouse each of us to the injustice that persists in our world today. May we recognize our own capacity to make a difference...

Candle Lighting from AJWS

by K S

As we light the candles and welcome the glow of Passover into our homes, we pray that all those suffering around the world find light in the darkness. We pray that our experience tonight helps us to ignite the spark of justice within each of us. We pray that we have the strength to carry forth this light into the world, creating a beautiful and bold flame that inspires others to work by our sides to pursue freedom and justice for...

-- Exodus Story

The story of Passover clip #7 from the SISO Jubilee Haggadah

by K S

When Israel left Europe after the great massacre, Judah became their holy one, Israel their dominion. It was then that the house of Jacob saw the sea flee, the Jordan turn back, the mountains dance like rams, the hills like lambs! But not only had the sea fled before Israel. Many of the people of the land fled before the armies of Israel and became refugees abroad. Their brethren were defeated once and again, and those who remained behind in the...

-- Cup #2 & Dayenu

The story of Passover clip #6 from the SISO Jubilee Haggadah

by K S

This text has another peculiarity: it is not only a story. It wants to be the reenactment of a living memory. Why commemorate at all? Why not simply celebrate freedom? This is because freedom can bring with it the forgetfulness of bondage. Freedom can make one smug. Freedom is so fundamental that once free, we can easily forget what it is to be unfree, what it is like to be arrested at checkpoints, to see one’s land grabbed and confiscated, to...

The story of Passover clip #5 from the SISO Jubilee Haggadah

by K S

The tension — “never again,” and “never again to Jews” — hardly mattered in the diaspora, where the Haggadah was composed and for which it was intended. There was an implicit assumption that Jews were the unarmed outsiders — so that doing what prevented their persecution, or advanced their civic relations, also advanced social tolerance and the formation of civil society more generally. This is, gratefully, not the condition of Jews today, and not the way the Haggadah reads. Israelis have...

The story of Passover clip #4 from the SISO Jubilee Haggadah

by K S

The ten plagues have always been an embarrassment for Jewish liberals and leftists. Why does God harden Pharaoh’s heart when he could have softened it, set the Israelites on their march much sooner, and avoided the terrible suffering of the Egyptian people? So we dip a finger and spill the wine in order to reduce our pleasure in Egyptian pain. But it would be better to focus on the pain and think about the possibility of a different deliverance. History is...

-- Exodus Story

The story of Passover clip #3 from the SISO Jubilee Haggadah

by K S

The traditional Haggadah, the narration of the Passover story, has three separate beginnings, each with a different meaning: “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt”; “At first our ancestors were idol-worshippers”; and “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down to Egypt.” These remind us of the multiple forms of liberation embodied in the Exodus: liberation from slavery and oppression; from ignorance and superstition; and from homelessness and helplessness. And what are we to make of all this? The...

-- Exodus Story

The story of Passover clip #2 from the SISO Jubilee Haggadah

by K S

From this passage we learn that a people can sustain decades, even centuries, of oppression and humiliation. Yet despite all the hardship, such a people can flourish in many ways including increasing in number. And it can flourish in spirit, maintaining hope and conviction that its days of alienation from freedom — personal and national — are numbered. As Jews, we remember that we became collectively alienated from our land by leaving it and became aliens in another land. So, too,...

-- Exodus Story

The story of Passover clip from the SISO Jubilee Haggadah

by K S

If in Egypt we became foreigners who were denied all rights to existence, liberty and land, and in this lay the root of our subjugation, we must not do to others what we ourselves hate. The Palestinian people that lives among us also needs its land, its existence, and its liberty. But it is not through a peace of secularization, which severs the people from its roots, that we will attain to peace and to our inheritance. Not through ways of...

-- Four Children

The Fifth Child from the SISO Jubilee Haggadah

by K S

But there is a fifth child: A caring one. What does the caring one say? “What is God that He is moved only by the suffering of the Israelites and not by the suffering of the Egyptians?” You say to her, “In the Talmud, the Rabbi explains: ‘At that time when the Egyptians were drowning, the ministering angels wanted to recite a song of praise in the presence of the Holy One Blessed is He. The Holy One Blessed is He...

-- Four Children

The Four Children from the SISO Jubilee Haggadah

by K S

The four children teach us something entirely different. The wise thirsts for knowledge. We are not to shut his mouth, but rather to seek a response worthy of his curiosity. The simple, encapsulates it all into one word: “what?” Here the Haggadah tells us that nothing could be more obvious, pure and simple than to ask. As for ‘the one who knows not how to ask’, we are commanded to “open his world”, to teach him to ask! But the most...

Urchatz reading from SISO Jubilee Haggadah

by K S

The Seder Night is a call for change. We have to move out of our comfort zone, to expose ourselves without the protective envelope of our daily routines, to sense discomfort — to change. And a Seder Night marked by fifty years of rule over another people calls for an especially profound change. We can not wash our hands clean, as if to say "our hands have not done and our eyes have not seen." This time, we will use the...

Introduction from SISO Jubilee Haggadah

by K S

We were slaves unto Pharaoh, and now we are free. Passover for us is not only a celebration of freedom, but also a remembrance of subjugation, and both oblige us, in every generation, to engage in tikkun olam – to repair the world and struggle against injustice. The Mishnah teaches that whoever saves one person’s life has sustained an entire world; it follows that whoever saves a nation and a culture has sustained a great many worlds. Our world was sustained...

No Recent Haggadah

Karpas

by Lisa Marquardt

Revolutionary Karpas Jews for Racial & Economic Justice The karpas gives us the tension between the aliveness of Spring and the bitter tears we wept in the land of Egypt. We are refreshed by the greenness of the karpas, yet our tastebuds wince at the salt water to dip them in, as we recall our own experience of being strangers. Our tongues push our thoughts towards those who are made strangers in our present time, in this country. We dip the...

Karpas

by Danielle & Misha Slutsky

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 parsely, to represent our joy at the dawning of spring after our long, cold winter. Whatever symbol of spring and...

Shoes on the Doorstep

by HIAS

Before you begin the Seder, either walk with your guests to the front door or have one guest rise from the table and walk to the front door. There, place a pair of shoes on the doorstep and read the words below. Leader: The heart of the Passover Seder tells the story of the Jewish people’s exodus from slavery in Egypt. During the retelling of this story, we say the words, “בי ִא ד ָ בֹ ֵא מי ִּר ַאֲ (Arami...

From Amidst Brokenness

by HIAS

From Amidst Brokenness

-- Cup #2 & Dayenu

Dayenu - Today's Refugees

by HIAS

Dayenu - Today's Refugees

Next Year in Jerusalem

by HIAS

Next Year in Jerusalem

Introduction

by Moishe House Auckland

This introduction is taken from The New American Haggadah edited by Jonathan Safran Foer (Some alterations have been made.) ______________________________________ Here we are. Here we are, gathered to celebrate the oldest continually practiced ritual in the Western world, to retell what is arguably the best known of all stories, to take part in the most widely practiced Jewish holiday. Here we are, as we were last year, and as we hope to be next year. Here we are, as night descends...

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