About three thousand years ago, ancient Israelites fused a shepherds’ spring celebration of the birthing of lambs and a farmers’ spring celebration of the sprouting of barley into a spring celebration of their liberation from slavery and the downfall of a tyrant.

About two thousand years ago, the Jewish people reshaped that celebration into a Seder, a story and meal that could be eaten and told at home. The Passover story and celebration entered the memory stream of Christianity through the teachings of Jesus in the Last Supper, which seems to have been a Passover Seder. Still later, Islam welcomed Moses as a prophet.

In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King was planning to take part in a Passover Seder with the family of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched and prayed and struggled alongside him against racism and militarism in America. But ten days before the Seder, Dr. King was murdered.

“Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.” - Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1970

Passover allows us a chance to connect with each other and with ourselves, and to help us remember all the ways we enslave ourselves when we lapse into automatic, familiar thought patterns.

Jewel - Life Uncommon

And lend your voices only to sounds of freedom
No longer lend your strength to that
Which you wish to be free from
Fill your lives with love and bravery
And we shall lead a life uncommon

There are plenty of people who pray for peace
But if praying were enough it would have come to be
Let your words enslave no one and the heavens will hush themselves
To hear our voices ring out clear
With sounds of freedom, Sounds of freedom

Come on you unbelievers, move out of the way
There is a new army coming and we are armed with faith
To live, we must give, To live

And lend our voices only to sounds of freedom
No longer lend our strength to that which we wish to be free from
Fill your lives with love and bravery
And we shall lead...
Lend our voices only to sounds of freedom
No longer lend our strength to that which we wish to be free from
Fill you lives with love and bravery, And we shall lead a life uncommon


haggadah Section: Introduction