Welcome to our seder! As you know, in 2003 I had a double-lung transplant. This transplant has enriched my life dramatically, and I feel like it released me from the bonds of cystic fibrosis. The transplant even happened around the season of Passover, with my liberation from the chest tubes and the hospital happening on Passover itself! Every year I remember that liberation and feel a special closeness to Passover.

In light of that, I challenge each of us to name something that we feel we have been liberated from in the past year and something that we hope to be liberated from this year. Every year we should feel as if we are liberated from something, and continue to strive for more.

This haggdah is titled Flight of the Tortoiseflies because of what a tortoisefly represents. A tortoisefly has the ability to change and adapt to conditions with the beauty and grace of a butterfly. A tortoisefly also has the toughness and longevity to outlast anything. The Israelites were tortoiseflies when they hurried out of Egypt with matzo on their backs, when they made the psychological shift from being an enslaved to a free people, and when they wandered through the desert for 40 years to Israel, the Promised Land!

A flight of a tortoisefly is the shift, physical, mental, and spiritual from enslavement to freedom.

So let's begin! I hope that each of us experiences a flight of a tortoisefly! 

With love,

Wendy Abrams

Passover 2013


haggadah Section: Introduction
Source: Original