Leader: This is OUR story. This is the story of our slavery and the story of our flight into freedom. In the Talmud it says that the angels in Heaven rejoiced to see the Egyptian soldiers drowning in the sea.                     God silenced them and asked “how can you sing when My children are dying?” We must remember that freedom carries a heavy cost. We must remember that those we call our enemies are God’s children too. Without this knowledge, our freedom is incomplete. Ten plagues cursed Egypt. They still touch lives and communities today and so we pause in our celebration to remember and to mourn. We spill ten drops from our cups to show that we cannot be completely happy, because others had to die so that we could be free. We honor them and we recognize the ways in which we too, suffer the plagues of Egypt. The blood of tyrants and freedom fighters has watered history. It is incumbent upon us to remember the blood of tyrants and prophets and martyrs and to work to end the letting of blood in God’s name. As we empty one drop of wine for each of these plagues, let us cast them out of hearts, out of lives and our of our world. May we and all people be free.

All: Blood, frogs, live, wild beasts, disease, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, death of the first born.

Leader: As there were plagues in the time of Moses, so too are there plagues that threaten us today. Let us names them together, as we pray that they may be cast out wherever they are found, beginning in our own hearts.

Participant: The making of war

Participant: The teaching of hate and violence

Participant: Despoliation of the earth

Participant: Perversion of justice and government

Participant: Formenting of vice and crime

ParticipantNeglect of human needs

ParticipantOppression of nations and peoples

ParticipantCorruption of cultures

Participant: Subjugation of science, learning and human discourse

ParticipantThe erosion of freedoms

Participant: The theft of our voices, autonomy and choice.

 


haggadah Section: -- Ten Plagues
Source: Unitarian Universalist Haggadah