It hasn't been an easy year to get ready for Passover, watching the genocide of Palestinians unfold in the place we talk about tonight as a holy destination for our Hebrew ancestors. We have all watched the chilling footage, ubiquitously available, as each person in this genocide is murdered, each a world as the Talmud says (Sanhedrin 37a): “Whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the world.”


What does it mean, then, as over 30,000 people are killed in our name, defenseless and starving, to engage in a ritual that requires us to put ourselves in the place of an enslaved people? Does it serve us, when our people have become Pharoh? How many hearts have been hardened, how many necks have been stiffened, to bring us to this moment in which we're meant to praise and celebrate our own liberation - does that feel fair or right, under the circumstances?  How can we use this process to make a difference for good and liberation, how can we undermine the victim paradigm to accept and take responsibility for the powers we have? What can be found in the Seder's text and the Exodus story to help us in this work?


As we encounter the Seder, for bitter or worse, we will also find solidarity, mess, mystery, and resistance sustenance. 


Some of our ancestors have done terrible things. I too have benefitted from their unethical, inhumane, fatal decisions. We all pay in our ways. 


Some years we approach this ritual as Moses the Main Character (who himself committed one murder as an act of justice) and sometimes we approach it as a slain first-born child and sometimes we approach it as the icy hailstone burning fine within and sometimes we must approach it as Pharoh. 




haggadah Section: Introduction