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A Note to Non-Jews: You are very welcome at our Seder!!! Jesus was a Jew, and the Last Supper was a Seder. Muhammed deeply appreciated and made cultural appropriation of sections of the Hebrew Bible. Our supplement affirms the liberatory message that is part of Judaism,Christianity, and Islam, and is found in many other religious and spiritual traditions as well. You may find some
of this ritual helpful if you create your own rite to celebrate the key insight of Easter or of any of the spring holidays of the world: that rebirth, renewal, and transformation are possible, and that we are not stuck in the dark, cold, and deadly energies of winter. Judaism
builds on that universal experience of nature and adds another dimension: it suggests that the class structure (slavery, feudalism, capitalism, or neoliberal imperialism) can be overcome, and that we human beings, created in the image of the Transformative Power of the Universe (God), can create a world based on love, generosity, justice and peace.

A note to Everyone

We welcome atheists and agnostics and secular humanists to our Seder.

So why do we talk about God? Very few of us in our community think of God as a big man in heaven, omnipotent and omniscient, patriarchal and judgmental. So the God you don’t believe in most of us at Beyt Tikkun don’t believe in either. So when we talk about God we are talking about the spiritual energy of the universe which makes it possible to transcend the tendency of human beings to pass on to others the hurt and pain that has been done to us, the force that permeates every ounce of Being and unites all in one transcendent and imminent reality. God is the Force in the universe that makes possible the transformation from “that which is” to “that which can and ought to be” or, as God is quoted as saying in Torah, ehyeh asher ehyeh, which Rabbi Lerner translates as “the possibility of possibility.” In short, we understand God in part as the ultimate Unity of All with All, of whom we are always a part, even if we are not always conscious of the part of God we are, the part of God that everyone and everything is. Because God has taken a male pronoun in much of Jewish history (though God obviously has no gender) we have chosen to sometimes use the word ‘Shechina’ which has come to be identified with the female energies that are part of the God-field.

It is precisely when we become the fullest conscious embodiments of who we actually are (namely, a cell in the totality of All Being and a manifestation of this God of Transformation-- tikkun) that we feel empowered to become part of the evolving liberation story of the universe, of which the Passover celebration is at once a commemoration and a renewal. Every time you read the Torah or any other of our holy books and you see the word ‘God’ read it instead as “The Force in the universe that makes possible the transformation from THAT WHICH IS to THAT WHICH OUGHT TO BE,” in other words that which makes it possible the universe to evolve toward greater freedom, consciousness, love, generosity, empathy, awe and cooperation with all of the creation and caring about all forms of Being.” If you read the Bible and our holy texts that way you’ll soon see why Judaism can be a revolutionary and transformative spiritual practice.

Our Hasidic masters pointed out that the Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, can also be understood as “the narrow place of consciousness.” To be a slave is to only see the small picture placed in front of you by the powerful. The liberation struggle we celebrate tonight is not a one time event from the past, but rather is a process that must continue from generation
to generation.

Unrealistic? Yes. Just like every liberation struggle and every attempt to move beyond the

narrow consciousness of what is possible that has been drummed into our heads by the Pharaohs of every age. Passover must become the time to replenish our energies to become the agents of an expanded consciousness that can envision and then create a world that lives in harmony with planet Earth. Whatever makes these kinds of transformation possible is an important part of what we mean when we talk about God.

Many (not all) of the people who fill up our churches, synagogues and mosques don’t really believe in this God. Too many of them are cynical about those who think that something

fundamental can be changed. And this same cynicism can be found in many atheists and

secular humanists as well. Our task is to recognize that this cynicism is often a product of moments in life when people hoped for more serious changes but the changes didn’t happen, and then they grew despairing or depressed, and eventually took on cynicism as a way of not feeling humiliated at having opened themselves once again to the possibility of a different world only to find that it had not yet been achieved. Compassion and empathy is our way of engaging with those who despair of the fundamental changes that are the necessary to save life on this planet. And we at Beyt Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives feel allied with all those on the planet, whether religious or secular, who are engaged in the healing and transformation of our world! All of these, in every religion or secular are who we mean when we ask for God’s blessing on “the people of Israel”—not some narrower conception, but all these God-wrestlers who are choosing to be God’s partner in Tikkun—the healing repair and transformation that our world so badly needs (whether or not they believe in God)!

haggadah Section: Introduction

Source: Rabbi Michael Lerner