Reader

That's the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered.

Group

It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because, in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.

Reader

In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.

- Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank

As we remember this struggle, we honor the midwives who were the first Jews to resist the Pharaoh.  our legends tell us that Pharaoh, behaving in a way common to oppressors, tried to get Jews to collaborate in murdering their own people.  He summoned the two chief midwives, Shifra and Pu'ah, and commanded them to kill newborn Jewish males at birth.  He threatened the midwives with death by fire if they failed to follow his commands.

But the midwives did not follow orders.  Instead of murdering the infants, they took special care of them and their mothers.  When Pharaoh asked them to account for all the living children, they made up the excuse that Jewish women gave birth too fast to summon midwives in time.

The midwives' acts of civil disobedience were the first stirrings of resistance among the Jewish slaves. The actions of the midwives gave the people courage both to withstand their oppression and to envision how to overcome it.  It became the forerunner of the later resistance.  Thus Shifra and Pu'ah were not only midwives to the children they delivered, but also to the entire Jewish nation, in its deliverance from slavery.

Rebecca Alpert tells of a 1979 session on women and Jewish law

presented to the Jewish Women’s Group at the University of California

Berkeley Hillel by the rebbetzin of campus Chabad House. One student

asked the rebbetzin for her opinion about the place of lesbians in

Judaism. The rebbetzin suggested that lesbianism was a small transgression,

like eating bread during Passover. Something one shouldn’t do, but for

which there were few consequences. Some time later, when the Berkeley

students were planning their Seder, they chose to place a crust of bread on

their Seder plate in solidarity with lesbians who were trying to find a place

in Jewish life.

• Jewish Women’s Archive.

Susannah Heschel may be best known for a story that both is and is not hers.

After researching the marginalized roles of women, gays, and lesbians, Heschel decided, one Passover seder, to place an orange on her family’s seder plate.

“I chose an orange because it suggests the fruitfulness for all Jews when lesbians and gay men are contributing and active members of Jewish life,” Heschel wrote in an essay about the choice. “I also saw the orange as representing the fruitfulness that results when women lead the seder.

“Thus, while I originally placed an orange on my family seder plate for a combination of reasons related to women’s marginality in Judaism,” she explained, “when we ate the orange, I sent a message that was loud and clear: We were doing so to express our solidarity with gay and lesbian Jews. To speak of slavery and long for liberation demands that we acknowledge our own complicity in enslaving others.”

Heschel would mention her decision to place the orange on the seder plate in lectures—and was soon approached by strangers who told her that they were placing oranges on their seder plate because they had heard a story about her.

“The story went that, after a lecture I delivered in Miami Beach, a man stood up and angrily denounced feminism, saying that a woman no more belongs on the bimah [pulpit] than an orange belongs on the seder plate,” Heschel wrote. “After hearing this tale dozens of times, all over the country, I realized my story had fallen victim to a kind of folktale process in which my custom was affirmed, but my original intention was subverted. My idea—a woman’s words—were attributed to a man, and my goal of affirming lesbians and gay men was erased.”

From the Univ of Pennsylvania Alumni Gazette

In Plato's Athens, philosophers and men of letters would convene in each other's homes for freewheeling debate, interspersing epicurean collation with pithy conversation. The Greeks had a word for such a gathering: symposium. And since the Rabbis of old were adept at adopting and transfiguring the customs of secular society, some scholars see the symposium as the model for our seder.

There is, of course, a world of difference. The Seder breathes a degree of democracy unheard of in the Graeco-Roman world. THe Seder is an equal-opportunity celebration, both a reenactment of history and a reaffirmation of faith, both a national commemoration and a family affair involving every man, woman and child in the community. All are invited, all are welcome, all are equal.

The South Philadelphia Hebrew Association SPHAs (pronounced "spas") dominated basketball in the 1920s and '30s.  The team's flashy shooter was set-shot expert Inky Lautman and the Biblical David was the six-pointed star on the early SPHA's jerseys. The "Hebrews," as they were called, eventually morphed into the NBA's first champion, the 1946-47 Philadelphia Warriors.

"The reason, I suspect, that basketball appeals to the Hebrew with his Oriental background," wrote Paul Gallico, sports editor of the New York Daily News in the 1930s, "is that the game places a premium on an alert, scheming mind, flashy trickiness, artful dodging and general smart aleckness."

Writers opined that Jews had an advantage in basketball because short men have better balance and more foot speed. They were also thought to have sharper eyes, which of course cut against the stereotype that Jewish men were myopic and had to wear glasses. But who says stereotypes have to be consistent?

Basketball has always been a game of the inner city. At the turn of the century, European Jews flooded off immigrant ships into the ghettos of the booming Eastern metropolises. New York and Philadelphia were the epicenters of the basketball world, with the dominant team, the Hebrews, ensconced in South Philly.

"Basketball is a city game," notes Sonny Hill, an executive adviser with the Philadelphia 76ers. "If you trace basketball back to the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, that's when the Jewish people were very dominant in the inner city. And they dominated basketball."

"It was absolutely a way out of the ghetto," said Dave Dabrow, a guard with the original Hebrews. "It was where the young Jewish boy would never have been able to go to college if it wasn't for the amount of basketball playing and for the scholarship."

Although New York turned out, in pure numbers, more stars that were Jewish, the Philadelphia SPHAs were basketball's best known and most successful all-Jewish team. From 1918 onward, the "Hebrews" barnstormed across the East and Midwest, playing in a variety of semi-pro leagues that were precursors to the NBA. In an incredible 22-season stretch, they played in 18 championship series, winning 13.

Playing 80 or more games a year and with no home court to call their own, they were sometimes called "The Wandering Jews." Then, with the emergence of National Socialism in Germany and an escalation of anti-Semitism in the U.S., the Jewish players faced incessant racial slurs and biased officials in the small towns in which they played.

"Half the fans would come to see the Jews get killed, and the other half were Jews coming to see our boys win," said Gottlieb. "...Whenever something would happen down on the court that those Brooklyn fans didn't like, they'd send [beer] bottles down at us."

The Jewish heyday lasted until the late 1940s, when dominion over the urban basketball courts passed to blacks, the fastest-growing group of urban dwellers who were migrating north from dying Southern farms in search of opportunity. The new generation of Jews began moving on to other pursuits -- into teaching, off to dental school, and out to the suburbs.

 (The leader also points to the Fair Trade Certified chocolate and says:)

Leader: This is Fair Trade Certified chocolate. It is grown under standards that prohibit the use of forced labor. It is on our seder plate to remind us that forced labor is still with us today.

Group: Once, we were slaves in Egypt.

Leader: Today, young children are toiling in the West African cocoa fields.

Group: Just as Moses grew up in the house of the Pharaoh, we have influence over those who exploit children in the cocoa fields.

Leader: We can walk in Moses’ footsteps. We can have the courage to ask the Pharoahs of today to let the children go.

Group: We feel our lives are busy. That we do not have the time. But where would we be if Moses did not take the time to lead us to freedom?

Leader: Where will those children be next year, if we do not take a little time to support their quest for freedom?

Group: Each year we say: “next year in Jerusalem.” This year, let us also say: “next year, an end to forced labor in the cocoa fields.”

Leader: Passover is not the only week in the year to think of forced labor and to dream of freedom for all. We can take action between this Passover and the next.

Group: Let us commit ourselves to looking for the Fair Trade Certified label whenever we enjoy chocolate, to help end the cycle of poverty and exploitation.

Leader: Let us partake of the taste of Fair Trade chocolate. It is chocolate that tastes not of exploitation, but of sweetness and freedom

By Michael Carniol

The Four Questions

Why is it only on Passover night

we never know how to do anything right?

We don't eat our meals in the regular ways,

the ways that we do on all other days.

'Cause on all other nights we may eat

all kinds of wonderful good bready treats,

like big purple pizza that tastes like a pickle,

crumbly crackers and pink pumpernickel,

sassafras sandwich and tiger on rye,

fifty felafels in pita,fresh-fried,

with peanut-butter and tangerine sauce

spread onto each side up-and-down, then across,

and toasted whole-wheat bread with liver and ducks,

and crumpets and dumplings,and bagels and lox,

and doughnuts with one hole and doughnuts with four,

and cake with six layers and windows and doors.

Yes--

on all other nights

we eat all kinds of bread,

but tonight of all nights

we munch matzah instead.

And on all other nights

we devour

vegetables, green things,

and bushes and flowers,

lettuce that's leafy

and candy-striped spinach,

fresh silly celery

(Have more when you're finished!)

cabbage that's flown

from the jungles of Glome

by a polka-dot bird

who can't find his way home,

daisies and roses

and inside-out grass

and artichoke hearts

that are simply first class!

Sixty asparagus tips

served in glasses

with anchovy sauce

and some sticky molasses--

But on Passover night

you would never consider

eating an herb

that wasn't all bitter.

And on all other nights

you would probably flip

if anyone asked you

how often you dip.

On some days I only dip

one Bup-Bup egg

in a teaspoon of vinegar

mixed with nutmeg,

but sometimes we take

more than ten thousand tails

of the Yakkity-birds

that are hunted in Wales,

and dip them in vats

full of Mumbegum juice.

Then we feed them to Harold,

our six-legged moose.

Or we don't dip at all!

We don't ask your advice.

So why on this night

do we have to dip twice?

And on all other nights

we can sit as we please,

on our heads, on our elbows,

our backs or our knees,

or hang by our toes

from the tail of a Glump,

or on top of a camel

with one or two humps,

with our foot on the table,

our nose on the floor,

with one ear in the window

and one out the door,

doing somersaults

over the greasy k'nishes

or dancing a jig

without breaking the dishes.

Yes--

on all other nights

you sit nicely when dining--

So why on this night

must it all be reclining?

In Plato's Athens, philosophers and men of letters would convene in each other's homes for freewheeling debate, interspersing epicurean collation with pithy conversation. The Greeks had a word for such a gathering: symposium. And since the Rabbis of old were adept at adopting and transfiguring the customs of secular society, some scholars see the symposium as the model for our seder.

There is, of course, a world of difference. The Seder breathes a degree of democracy unheard of in the Graeco-Roman world. THe Seder is an equal-opportunity celebration, both a reenactment of history and a reaffirmation of faith, both a national commemoration and a family affair involving every man, woman and child in the community. All are invited, all are welcome, all are equal.

Adapted from Aish.com  Rabbi Benjamin Blech, prof of Talmud at Yeshivah University)

Gifts to mankind from the story of Passover, which also define our identity

Passover conveys five major concepts that became our mantras for how to lead successful and productive lives. They are the five most important things to know about Passover, and to incorporate into every day of the rest of the year. Because we’ve absorbed them into our national psyche for the thousands of years since the Exodus, we’ve been privileged to fulfill in great measure our prophetically mandated role to become a light unto the nations.

They are our greatest contributions to the world and can be summarized in five words: memory, optimism, faith, family, and responsibility.

The importance of Memory

"Remember that you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

 "Remember that the Lord took you out of the bondage of slavery." 

Remember  is a biblical mandate that empowers us to act (based on our past) to make the world better, for the present and the future.

The importance of Optimism

The most difficult task Moses had to perform was not to get the Jews out of Egypt, but to get Egypt out of the Jews. They had become so habituated to their status as slaves, they lost all hope that they could ever improve their lot.

Without hope they would have been lost.

The true miracle of Passover and its relevance for the ages is the message that with God’s help, no difficulty is insurmountable. A tyrant like Pharaoh could be overthrown. A nation as powerful as Egypt could be defeated. Slaves could become freemen. The oppressed could break the shackles of their captivity. Anything is possible, if only we dare to dream the impossible dream.

It was the biblical record of the Exodus that enabled the spirit of optimism to prevail for the followers of Martin Luther King in their quest for equal rights, because they were stirred by the vision of Moses leading his people to the Promised Land. It was the hope engendered by recalling how God redeemed our ancestors that allowed even Jews incarcerated in Auschwitz to furtively celebrate the Festival of Freedom and believe in the possibility of their own liberation.

The importance of Faith

Jewish optimism is rooted in a firmly held belief that we are blessed with support from above by a caring God.

And that faith in a personal God gives us faith in ourselves, in our future and in our ability to help change the world

The Passover story conveys that history is not happenstance. It follows a Divine master plan. It has a predestined order. “Order” in Hebrew is “Seder” – and that is why the major ritual of Passover is identified by that name.

Coincidence is not a Jewish concept. Coincidence is just God's way of choosing to remain anonymous.

Faith gives us the certainty that whatever our present-day problems, history moves in the direction of the final messianic redemption. That is what has always motivated us to believe in progress and to participate in  tikkun olam,  efforts to improve the world.

The importance of Family

The way to perfect the world is to begin with our own families.

God built his nation by commanding not a collective gathering of hundreds of thousands in a public square but by asking Jews to turn their homes into places of family worship at a Seder devoted primarily to answering the questions of children.

Children are our future. They are the ones who most require our attention. The home is where we first form our identities and discover our values.

More even than the synagogue, it is in our homes that we sow the seeds of the future and ensure our continuity. No wonder then that commentators point out the very first letter of the Torah is a  bet,  the letter whose meaning is house. 

At the Seder table, the children are encouraged to be the stars and their questions are treated with respect. And that is the first step to developing Jewish identity and commitment to tikkun olam.

The importance of Responsibility to Others

An important question, even at the risk of seeming ungrateful:

As we thank God for getting us out of Egypt....why did God allow us to become victims of such terrible mistreatment in the first place?

The Torah provides an answer:

We were slaves in Egypt – and so we have to have empathy for the downtrodden in every generation.

We were slaves in Egypt –  and so we have to be concerned with the rights of the strangers, the homeless and the impoverished.

We experienced oppression –  and so we must understand more than anyone else the pain of the oppressed.

The purpose of our suffering was to turn us into a people committed to righting the wrongs of the world, to become partners with God (and others) in making the world worthy of final redemption.

They came for the Communists, and I didn't

speak up, because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't

speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Trade-Unionists, and I didn't

speak up because I wasn't a Trade-Unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't

speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time

there was no one left to speak up.

• Reverend Martin Niemoeller. 

The Jews in Bergen Belsen had no matzot for Pesah 1944.  It was decided that it was permissible to eat hametz and that the following prayer should be recited before eating:

"Our father in heaven, behold, it is evident and known to You that it is our desire to do Your will and to celebrate the festival of Pesah by eating matzah and by observing the prohibition against hametz.  But our hearts are pained that the enslavement prevents us from doing so, and our lives are in danger.  Behold, we are ready to fulfill Your commandment, "and you shall live by them and not die by them."  Therefore, our prayer to You is that YOu may keep us alive and save us and rescue us speedily so that we may observe YOur commandments and do Your will and serve You with a perfect hear. Amen."

The story has been told of a miraculous well of living water which had

accompanied the Jewish people since the world was spoken into being.

The well comes and goes, as it is needed, and as we remember, forget,

and remember again how to call it to us. In the time of the exodus from

Mitzrayim, the well came to Miriam, in honor of her courage and action,

and stayed with the Jews as they wandered the desert. Upon Miriam’s

death, the well again disappeared.

On our table tonight, we have two extra cups, one of wine and one of water.

Reader

It is the women of our story who make its unfolding possible. Shifrah and

Puah, the midwives who disobey Pharaoh's order to kill all newborn boys;

Yocheved and Miriam, the mother and sister of Moses; Pharaoh's

daughter who rescues Moses from the Nile. Pharaoh pays little mind to

the women, yet it is their daring actions that began it all. It is because of

them that we are here tonight; it is because of them that we are able to

thank God for our freedom, just as Miriam led us in song to God after we

crossed through the parted waters.

Group

With this ritual of Miriam’s cup of water, we honor all Jewish women. We

commit ourselves to transforming all of our cultures into loving,

welcoming spaces for people of all genders.

Excerpted from :Invisible The Story of Modern Day Slavery A Social Justice Haggadah What you make of liberation - That is the trick. Can you, unshackled, set someone else free?

“In every generation, each individual is obligated to see himself as if he actually went out of Egypt” (Talmud-Pesachim 116b)

“the more one tell of the outgoing fom Egypt, the more praiseworthy he is.”

“In every generation, a person must see herself as though she, personally, came out of Egypt.”

“ You must tell your child that very day, ‘this is because of what God did fro me when I left Egypt”

“let all who are hungry, come and eat”

“You shall not oppress the stranger, for you know the heart of the stranger, as you were strangers in the land of Egypt” Exodus 23:9