I participated in my first two seders this year. It was a beautiful and memorable experience and I, too, now know the joy of having “Dayeinu” stuck in my head for days….

One of the things we talked about at both Seders is how many people are still enslaved, literally, in our world today, including many people trafficked into and exploited in our very own countries. Very sobering.

It was a great Passover but I’m very happy to be back in the world of chametz today! 6 years ago

We had a vegetarian Seder this year and the in the past few years. I asked for it and I think that at this point I wouldn’t come if we had meat in the Seder, the milk and eggs are hard enough.
You can’t talk about freedom when you have animal products on the table. You can’t cage and kill in order to celebrate your freedom, it doesn’t work like that.

The animals you eat are not in Egypt, they are in hell.

http://www.jewishveg.com/passover.html
http://www.peta.org/feat/passover/ 6 years ago

but I’m ready to be done with Passover! Enough matzah, already!

This was a good one; I gave myself a holiday yesterday, driving around in the wilds of Central California, wandering southward from the foothill city where I led a seder Saturday night. I drove thorugh Yosemite Valley, and south through “Gold Rush” country, and saw a lot of little towns so isolated that my cell phone never did have any reception!

It was my own little celebration of freedom, too: seems like every day has so much to be done in it, lately, and a day spent wandering from one thing to another, just doing whatever piqued my curiosity, was an enormous treat. (However, keeping even somewhat kosher l’pesach was certainly weird: I have been living on peanuts and Osem chicken broth.)

Now I’m headed back to L.A. for more work and more classes, and towards the end-of-term rush.

http://www.judaicawebstore.com/guysen/products/10/Medium/o-0025_med.jpg" alt="" />6 years ago

“Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone; and bless me also.”

These are Pharoah’s last words to Moses and Aaron in the Passover story.

When I went to the Maundy Thursday event, one of the things I said to the nice church ladies I was sitting with was, I felt like one of the great values of a festival like Passover and the ritual of the seder is that it transforms a potentially terrible event in the history of a people, of being enslaved, and turns it into a celebration of freedom. Instead of cursing what happened to us, we sing Dayenu, a song of gratitude, a song about our cup overflowing.

One the important tasks in front of us in our lives is to look at the traumatic things that happen to us, and be able to, as one 43thing goal states, “turn my past into compost”. To be able to take the terrible events that happen and say, not just, this was OK, or even, this was necessary, but to take it yet further, and see it as a blessing in your life.

Pharoah’s request sounds crazy: here he is, the instrument of the Israelite’s oppression, and his last words to them are, go out to your new place, and bless me. Bless me!

He asks for a radical forgiveness. This is not just, I forgive you for the terrible things you did to me, but I bless you for them!

Do I have this capacity, to do this, to say, not, “damn you”, not even just, “I forgive you”, but even, “Thank you for making me grow”?

Talk about true liberation! 6 years ago

with a congregation in the foothills of the Sierras tonight! 6 years ago

Each year on Passover night there are massive traffic jams in Israel. Everybody’s driving to the Seder somewhere. Then everyone’s driving back. During the holiday everyone’s on the roads again, it’s such a lovely time to get out on a trip with the kids!
On the other side, not “Seder” but “Seger”, closure. When we celebrate in Israel, it’s the hardest in Palestine. When families go on trips, some can’t go out of their town. How can we really celebrate when we know that it causes suffer to others? How can we sit down and tell about our freedom when in the same moment we’re taking freedom from others?
Some of my friends from Palestine greeted me for the holiday. I appreciate it more than every other greeting because I can’t imagine how hard it is. 6 years ago

The goal, “Have my soul be completely protected” is also about freedom: freedom from fear, freedom from victimization. I have already escaped from this particular Egypt, and have even been to Sinai, but I worry that there’s still many more years wandering in the wilderness with this one.

_{and even when they made it to the Promised Land, it wasn’t a cakewalk}6 years ago

I thought the way I’d approach this is by looking at my 43things, either goals or entries, that are about liberation.

Here’s one, from the goal, Appreciate my husband :

My relationship with my husband is loving, affectionate, erotic, and supportive. He is funny and relaxed. We have many interesting and challenging adventures together. He liberates me by providing loving support from which I can realize my dreams. 6 years ago

sometimes I’d like a little freedom from the tunes that run through my head nonstop during Passover…

I’ve been running “Dayeinu” all day long!

Ilu hotzi, hotzianu, hotzianu mimitzrayim…

AAUUGGHHH! 6 years ago

The Hebrew word for Egypt is “mitzrayim,”
which can also mean “a narrow space.”

Where are the narrow spaces in my heart this year?
Has it become Pharaoh-like and hard?
Who or what do I no longer care enough about?
Who and what have I given up in despair?

This year I see a great deal of narrowness around me.
I see a fascination with torture, which I am convinced
Has to do with the changing norms about it in my country.
“You were once strangers in the land of Egypt”
We are commanded to remember that. We are accountable
for the way we treat strangers.

My tax dollars at work. What have I done to protest?
What have I done for the disenfranchised?
How am I using my own precious freedom?

Every year this holiday comes at me as a challenge:
leave Egypt. Trust that the impossible can happen,
that waters can part, that a little band of nobodies
can change history. Leave Egypt.

Leave no one behind. 6 years ago

Each year we sit down together to read the Haggadah and we tell the story of going from slavery to freedom. Each year I think of those who were victims of our freedom and of those who are still in slavery. I cannot disconnect the political and social issues from this holiday as I feel that’s what it is about.

No one is truly free until everyone is free. 6 years ago