What Can these words mean?
We are slaves because yesterday our people were in slavery, and memory makes yesterday real for us.
We are slaves because today there are still people in chains around the world and no one can be truly free while othes are in chains.
We are slaves because freedom means more than broken chains. Where there is poverty and hunger and homelessness, there is no freedom; where there is prejudice and bigotry and discrimination, there is no freedom; where there is violence and torture and war, there is no freedom.
And where each of us is less than he or she might be, we are not free, not yet.
And who, this year, can be deaf to the continuing oppression of the downtrodden, who can be blind to the burdens and the rigors that are now to be added to the most vulnerable in our midst?
If these things be so, who among us can say tha he or she is free?
(Leonard Fein, founder of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, 1985).
“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”
We begin by recalling the first seder night in history when we "hurriedly left Egypt:"
"The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt...
This is how you shall eat it (the Pesach meal): your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand: and you shall eat it hurriedly: it is a Passover offering to the Lord..
In the middle of the night the Lord struck down all the first-born in the land of Egypt...
The Egyptians urged the people on, impatient to have them leave the country, for they said,
"We shall all be dead!" So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks upon their shoulders..." (Exodus 12:11-29,33-34).
Here I Am, ready to perform the mitzvah of retelling the story of the Exodus from Egypt.
"Forgetfulness leads to exile, while memory is the secret of redemption," says the Baal Shem Tov (18th C. founder of Hassidism).
Therefore, we celebrate Pssover by teaching ourselves to become inventive storytellers and empathetic listeners.
Time-servers are the cowering slaves of slaves,
Alone on earth, who serves the Lord is free,
Each soul shall win the gift that it most craves;
Seek God, my soul -- God shall your portion be!
The plagues God visited on the Egyptians in Egypt seem to be a parade of people’s greatest fears, a mythological show of the power of the living versus primal fear.
Starting from the blood of birth and of death, through primal human fears of small creatures (lice) and large ones (wild beasts), fear of financial ruin (locusts), fear of the dark (losing direction and meaning), we face the greatest fear: the fear of our children’s lives – loss of the future. Tonight, a night to commemorate the past, we seek the mercy of God’s protection, look out from our places at a world full of fears and dangers – and pray for another quiet year.
Shai Zarchi, Israeli educator at "HaMidrasha" and a reciepient of the Liebhaber prize for the Promotion of Religius Tolerance.
*HaMidrasha promotes Jewish renewal in Israel by using the Israeli-Zionist experience as a platform for reconnecting to Jewish heritage.
When a person eats and drinks [as part of celebrating a holiday], they are obligated to feed "the stranger, the orphan, and the widow" (Deuteronomy 16:11).
But someone who locks the doors of their house, eating and drinking with their children and spouse [alone], and doesn't provide food or drink to the poor and depressed, is not participating in the joy of [God's] commandments but rather the joy of the gut, and about them it says, "their sacrifices are like bread for the dead; all who eat of them will become impure, for their bread is for themselves" (Hosea 9:4) Joy like this is disgrace for them, as it says, "I will strew dung upon your faces, the dung of your festal sacrifices"(Malachi 2:3).
What Can these words mean?
We are slaves because yesterday our people were in slavery, and memory makes yesterday real for us.
We are slaves because today there are still people in chains around the world and no one can be truly free while othes are in chains.
We are slaves because freedom means more than broken chains. Where there is poverty and hunger and homelessness, there is no freedom; where there is prejudice and bigotry and discrimination, there is no freedom; where there is violence and torture and war, there is no freedom.
And where each of us is less than he or she might be, we are not free, not yet.
And who, this year, can be deaf to the continuing oppression of the downtrodden, who can be blind to the burdens and the rigors that are now to be added to the most vulnerable in our midst?
If these things be so, who among us can say tha he or she is free?
(Leonard Fein, founder of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, 1985).
“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”
We begin by recalling the first seder night in history when we "hurriedly left Egypt:"
"The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt...
This is how you shall eat it (the Pesach meal): your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand: and you shall eat it hurriedly: it is a Passover offering to the Lord..
In the middle of the night the Lord struck down all the first-born in the land of Egypt...
The Egyptians urged the people on, impatient to have them leave the country, for they said,
"We shall all be dead!" So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls wrapped in their cloaks upon their shoulders..." (Exodus 12:11-29,33-34).
Here I Am, ready to perform the mitzvah of retelling the story of the Exodus from Egypt.
"Forgetfulness leads to exile, while memory is the secret of redemption," says the Baal Shem Tov (18th C. founder of Hassidism).
Therefore, we celebrate Pssover by teaching ourselves to become inventive storytellers and empathetic listeners.
Time-servers are the cowering slaves of slaves,
Alone on earth, who serves the Lord is free,
Each soul shall win the gift that it most craves;
Seek God, my soul -- God shall your portion be!
The plagues God visited on the Egyptians in Egypt seem to be a parade of people’s greatest fears, a mythological show of the power of the living versus primal fear.
Starting from the blood of birth and of death, through primal human fears of small creatures (lice) and large ones (wild beasts), fear of financial ruin (locusts), fear of the dark (losing direction and meaning), we face the greatest fear: the fear of our children’s lives – loss of the future. Tonight, a night to commemorate the past, we seek the mercy of God’s protection, look out from our places at a world full of fears and dangers – and pray for another quiet year.
Shai Zarchi, Israeli educator at "HaMidrasha" and a reciepient of the Liebhaber prize for the Promotion of Religius Tolerance.
*HaMidrasha promotes Jewish renewal in Israel by using the Israeli-Zionist experience as a platform for reconnecting to Jewish heritage.
When a person eats and drinks [as part of celebrating a holiday], they are obligated to feed "the stranger, the orphan, and the widow" (Deuteronomy 16:11).
But someone who locks the doors of their house, eating and drinking with their children and spouse [alone], and doesn't provide food or drink to the poor and depressed, is not participating in the joy of [God's] commandments but rather the joy of the gut, and about them it says, "their sacrifices are like bread for the dead; all who eat of them will become impure, for their bread is for themselves" (Hosea 9:4) Joy like this is disgrace for them, as it says, "I will strew dung upon your faces, the dung of your festal sacrifices"(Malachi 2:3).
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