We start the seder with the blessing over the first of four cups of wine. Blessings over wine, called kiddush from the Hebrew word meaning holy, set aside, or marked off, are a fixture of Jewish tradition and usually mark the beginning of holidays and celebrations. Wine has been a part of many different religious observances since biblical times, and by saying a special prayer over the wine we are marking off our activities of before the holiday from those inside. Kiddush demarcates holy time, so we start our seder with this blessing.

As Marxists, we can use the ritual observance of Kiddush as a way to bring attention to and elevate issues we simply accept in our day to day lives. Thus, each of the cups of wine is dedicate to a particular struggle within the corpus of Marxist thought.


haggadah Section: Kadesh