Passover commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. Exodus is something that we recall in our liturgy every day; it’s the cornerstone of our ethical codes - whenever we are instructed to care for the oppressed it is couched in a reminder that we were once ourselves oppressed. The Seder begins with an urgent and proximate declaration of empathy. “All who are hungry, let them enter and eat. All who are in need, let them come celebrate.” 

Exodus is an event that happened historically, but also an archetype of a journey that happens every day of our lives. Leaving Mitzrayim is leaving the places that confine us. Be they physical, emotional or spiritual. This can occur with the breaths we take and the words we speak. It can happen in a singular moment, or it can take centuries of liberation work as an intergenerational process, of collective emergence, as we build the future. This Passover holiday not only commemorates the historical Exodus but invites us (in fact, demands from us) that we ourselves experience the journey from being stuck to unstuck, unfree to free.

How do we do this?

The Seder. The seder is our spiritual technology, or ceremony. The scaffolding or structure of the seder itself actually brings us through a mini redemption. The order of the seder brings us from narrowness to expansiveness - to taste freedom, and to loosen the shackles of what hems us in. The Mishnah gives us a template for the seder in Masechet Pesachim, begin in degradation, end in dignity. Throughout history, the Haggadah developed to include 15 stages that guide us through this process. From our own stuck places towards yearning and freedom. These 15 correspond to the 15 steps leading up the the Temple. So with these 15 steps of the seder, we rise

We begin our seder declaring that in the year to come, the homes that have been skipped by fortune, where plenty has missed its mark, where a living wage, where abundance and sufficiency have passed over, we with gratitude for our tables laden with food and lives filled with sustenance, will pronounce that, with the bread of affliction in our hands, we will not skip those who are hungry, literally or figuratively, any longer.

So, throughout the seder, we learn, we ask, we taste, we yearn, we remember and praise. We tell the story and we tell our stories. We learn how freedom and unfreedom are so mixed up with each other. How we celebrate being free, while we pray for redemption. We remember that true freedom includes facing all the broken parts. That our freedom is both personal, and collective. In each particular moment, it is ongoing and intergenerational, spiritual and material. And so, like all of our holidays, Passover is about drawing from the ancient into the present. Bringing ceremony into our homes and building our emergent future, with intention and hope.

Our Wish: for each of us, a Pesach that is infinite in its possibilities of love and understanding, in its opportunities to share and learn, and journey towards restoration, hope and freedom.


haggadah Section: Introduction