[Selection from Pirkei Imahot 1.1, “Saying of the Mothers”:]

It’s the splitting of the sea that lets us out of Egypt: severed from the old self we thought invincible, we run toward a future that shatters the moment we enter it, becoming the multiple and unknown present.

Bless the world that breaks to let you through it,

Bless the gift of the grain that smashes its molecules to feed you over & over.

This Passover night, time is cracking open.

Wholeness is not the egg; it’s the tap tap tap of the wet-winged baby bird trying to get out.

Break the bread at the feast of liberation. Go ahead. Do it. The whole is already broken, and so are you, and freedom has to have its jagged edges. But keep one half for later, because this story isn’t whole, and isn’t over.

--Rabbi Jill Hammer


haggadah Section: -- Four Children
Source: Rabbi Jill Hammer