1 Mah Nishtanah / How is this night different?… 

Ready "So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks upon their shoulders." —Exodus 12:34 You’ll need to travel light. Take what you can carry: a book, a poem, a battered tin cup, your child strapped to your chest, clutching your necklace in one hot possessive fist. So the dough isn’t ready. So your heart isn't ready. You haven’t said goodbye to the places where you hid as a child, to the friends who aren’t interested in the journey, to the graves you’ve tended. But if you wait until you feel fully ready you may never take the leap at all and Infinity is calling you forth out of this birth canal and into the future’s wide expanse. Learn to improvise flat cakes without yeast. Learn to read new alphabets. Wear God like a cloak and stride forth with confidence. You won’t know where you’re going but you have the words of our sages, the songs of our mothers, the inspiration wrapped in your kneading bowl. Trust that what you carry will sustain you and take the first step out the door. (Rabbi Rachel Barenblat)

Exodus

To take the first step -- To sing a new song -- Is to close one's eyes and dive into unknown waters. For a moment knowing nothing risking all But then to discover The waters are friendly The ground is firm And the song -- the song rises again. Out of my mouth come words lifting the wind. And I hear for the first the song that has been in my heart silent unknown even to me. (Rabbi Ruth H. Sohn)


haggadah Section: Maggid - Beginning
Source: Rabbi Rachel Barenblat and Rabbi Ruth H. Sohn