The Four Cups of Welcome | Passover haggadah by Eva Orbuch

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The Four Cups of Welcome

כוס מרים • כוס אליהו • כוס רות • כוס הגר וישמעאל

FACILITATOR: You are each invited to imagine your heartspace. Imagine that it has a door. You are now invited to open that door, keeping it open as long as you like while we drink from The Four Cups of Welcome.

We have visited the Miriam’s Well as our beloveds washed our hands.

Now we visit to drink from its depths.

KOS MIRYAM/ MIRIAM’S CUP

PARTICIPANT: Before we fill our cups with water, I invite you dance and sing the waters up from the well.

We will never, never lose our way to the well

Of her memory and the power of her wellspring of Love

It will flow, it flows right now

- ALYdapted from Starhawk‘s Never Lose our Way to the Well

Please fill your glasses with water. The story of Miriam is a story about Love. This cup honors one of the heroines of the Exodus story who loved her brother Moses as she acted as his guardian. Legend tells us she was a midwife who lovingly helped women bring new Life into the world. She loved her brother by being his guardian. She loved her people by using her prophetic powers and by singing up a healing well in the desert. The feminists who created this ritual say that the waters within Miriam's Cup, "... are said to draw from the miraculous, life-giving waters of Miriam‘s well." We visit her well again, as legend tells us, the Israelites did again and again on their journey of becoming.

- Quote from The Women's Seder Sourcebook

"Miriam‘s Cup, glistening with water that energizes the soul, calls to us in confident invitation. Let all who are ready, come and fill it. Let all who are thirsty come and drink."

- Susan Schnur

FACILITATOR: RAISE MIRIAM'S CUP

Zot Kos Miryam, kos mayim khayim.

This is the Cup of Miriam, the cup of Living Waters.

- Matia Angelou and Janet Berkenfield

ALL: We raise up this cup / to honor and to invite / the wellspring of Love

FACILITATOR: As we bring our water cups to our lips, let us imagine or ask our beloveds to bring our cups to our lips as they bless us with the words, "May you never thirst." (Pause) Now imagine doing or do the same for your beloved as we send gratitude to the Source for clean water.

FACILITATOR: May the Waters we will imbibe from this Wellspring of Love calm our fears washing away our anxieties at this time when we wish for a different plague to pass over our homes and the homes of all we care about all over the world.

ALL: Amein (ah-mayn)!

ALL DRINK WATER

KOS ELIYAHU/ ELIJAH’S CUP

PARTICIPANT: It is said that Elijah is the harbinger to the Messianic era when Heaven resides on Earth. So that all who dwell on Earth may move out of the constriction we now face of climate change and global turmoil, "We ourselves will take on the task of Elijah the Prophet, turning our hearts to each other to save the Earth from destruction. We pledge ourselves to hand on to the next generation an earth that is washed in wind and sunlight, not scorched into a furnace by burning coal and oil and gas.” We pledge ourselves to hand on to the next generation a world where everyone dwells in peace and freedom, equality, respect, and Love for one another and our differences.

- Quote from "Becoming Elijah" by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

FACILITATOR: As we each pour a bit of wine or juice in our cups, we will each say aloud what we are willing to do to bring about the world in which we wish to dwell, saving imbibing for later.

ALL: GO AROUND AS EACH PERSON NAMES THEIR CONTRIBUTION FOR CHANGE.

FACILITATOR: RAISE ELIJAH'S CUP

Zot Kos Eliyahu, kos tikkun olam.

This is the cup of our collective tikkuning.

We will not wait to mend the world, to save the planet.

It is in our hands, and we will act now.

ALL: We raise up this cup / to honor and to invite / messiah within

Amein (ah-mayn)!

KOS RUT/ RUTH’S CUP

PARTICIPANT: FILLS RUTH'S CUP WITH WINE & RAISES IT

You are invited to pour a bit more wine into your cup. Rabbi Heidi Hoover invites us to, "fill a cup of wine for Ruth, the first Jew by choice and great-grandmother of King David. We open the door (to our hearts) to signify our welcome of Ruth and all who follow in her footsteps—those who become part of our people, part of our diversity. We declare that we do not have to wait for the Messianic age to make sure that every Jew feels fully comfortable and integrated into our people, no matter what their skin, hair or eye color is; no matter what their name sounds like; no matter how they became Jewish—through birth or through conversion, as a child or as an adult." We place this cup on our Seder table to commit to welcoming Jews of all ethnicities, backgrounds, and faiths- (or no-faiths-) of-origin, whether Sephardic or Mizrahi, of Bene or Beta Israel - into our sacred and social communities.

ALL: We raise up this cup / to honor and to invite / all Jews to our feast

Amein (ah-mayn)!

KOS HAGAR V’YISHMAEL/ HAGAR & ISHMAEL’S CUP

FACILITATOR: RAISES ISHMAEL’S CUP MAKING SURE IT'S FULL OF ARABIC COFFEE

You are invited to pour a bit more into your cup. Inspired by Ruth's Cup, we place a cup on our table as an invitation to those outside of our tribe who are being marginalized here and everywhere; to invite "the other" to our table, to open the door to our Muslim cousins who are finding themselves in the narrow spaces of discrimination in this country, now more than ever; in the state of Israel, as the Palestinians still find themselves without a homeland; and around the world. We place this cup on our Seder table as a promise that we will not standby while anyone tries to scapegoat people of Asian origin regarding COVID-19. We place this cup on our Seder table as an invitation to all of "the others," to welcome all in this nation and around the world who are marginalized and oppressed, including the immigrant and the refugee. We place this cup on our Seder table to honor and remember the Lives of servitude and contributions of women like Hagar (Ishmael's mother and handmaid servant to Sarah), Bilhah, and Zilpah (mothers' of four out of the 12 tribes of Israel & handmaid servants of Rachel and Leah). We place this cup on our Seder table as an invitation to each other to welcome the stranger, to love our neighbor as ourselves, especially at this time of global crisis.

ALL: We raise up this cup / to honor and to invite / all who are oppressed

Amein (ah-mayn)!

- From The Hineini Haggadah/HaG!ddUs 2020/5780 by Ahava Lilith evershYne

haggadah Section: Introduction