FOUR MORE QUESTIONS (Adapted from The Good Men Project)

  • Why is it that people around the world still live under oppressive regimes that limit their intellectual, religious, and economic freedoms?
  • Why is it that people in my own wealthy nation go hungry, with no bread, or matzah, or vegetables, or bitter herbs to eat?
  • Why is it that so many people still fight against our right to choose whom to love and whom to marry?
  • What can I do, in my own way, to fight the scourge of oppression, the slavery of poverty, the limits imposed by prejudice and intolerance, and to empower more people to be free?

AND STILL FOUR MORE  QUESTIONS

But the big questions of the seder—not the traditional Four Questions, which have concrete answers, but the existential questions about injustice, freedom, and what it means to be part of a people—are lifelong investigations that even the longest seder cannot fully answer.  Before we can find our way on the path to liberation, we must first craft the questions that will guide our journey. This year, the Jewish Women’s Archive (JWA) articulated four questions that challenge us and animate our work in this moment. 

  • How can our communities better embrace and celebrate the “mixed multitude” (“erev rav ,” Exodus 12:38) of the Jewish people?
  • How will we address gender inequity—revealed and reinforced by the pandemic—so that we can cultivate the  Miriams  of the future? 
  • How will we join together to dismantle white supremacy and antisemitism so that we may all live with freedom, safety, and belonging?
  • What can I do, in my own way, to fight the scourge of oppression, the slavery of poverty, the limits imposed by prejudice and intolerance, and to empower more people to be free?

How will we fulfill the obligation to tell our stories to future generations?

Learning and change begins with stories, so the final question offers a guide for approaching the rest. Telling our stories is an act of freedom, of creativity, of self-determination. We define ourselves—as individuals and as a people–through the stories we tell.


haggadah Section: -- Four Questions