This program offers a variety of ways into the themes of Pesach - three poems, a prose piece by Bryan Stevenson, and accompanying questions. I invite you to use them as writing prompts, or as foci for reflection as you prepare for Pesach; they may also be used to spark conversation at your Seder table, or to reflect on during the course of the holiday. I hope these materials enrich your encounter with Pesach during yet another difficult year and that the journey of the week leads you on nourishing and fruitful paths. Please feel free to contact me with questions, comments, stories from your Seder that flowed from these offerings.

May your Pesach celebrations bring meaning and pleasure!

I –

Leaving Egypt

The night is so dark
and I am afraid.
I see nothing, smell nothing,
the only reality –
I am holding my mother’s hand.

And as we walk
I hear the sounds
of a multitude in motion –
in front, behind,
all around,
a multitude in motion.

I have no thought of tomorrow,
now, in the darkness,
there is only motion
and my mother’s hand.

This “leaving Egypt” is experienced entirely through the senses. Close your eyes and let the poem lead you into a sensory experience of leaving Egypt – What are you experiencing? Who are you in the multitude, and who are you with, or are you solitary?

How might you imaginatively locate yourself in the “going out” story this year? Feel free to try out multiple personae, multiple versions of your own “going out” story… Tell the story, either writing it down as you prepare for the Seder or sharing it orally during the Seder.

What is hard for you about liminal moments, about the unknown? Who/what do you hold onto for support? What might be enlivening about such moments? What gifts could such times offer?

II -

Passover miracle
for Kara Tav

that we find our spring selves again,
shed the thick protective layers of winter
that shield but separate us
from the world out there.

We sit at the seder table
tired, yes, from all the work of preparation,
but hoping to be refreshed,
hoping in spirit to be refreshed.

Sitting at the seder table
we encounter
our younger selves,
wide-eyed, asking questions.

We become each year once again
the four sons, child-like,
spring-like, ready each year once again
to go out from Egypt

with nothing
but a pack on our back,
ready to walk once again
out into the wilderness

in search of our freedom
and our God.

What is your “spring self” like? What helps that self to come forth and shine? In what ways have these past months made that hard for you?

What do we traditionally think of as “the Passover miracles”? What are the miracles suggested here? What would constitute a miracle for you now in your life? What miracles have you been blessed with in the past - remember one, tell the story.

What were the questions your “younger self” asked? How are your questions different now?

What might constitute the particular “freedom” you are searching for in the wilderness? What might it mean to search for your God? What are you in search of this Pesach?

III –

A crucial component of the Seder is to help us as those who were once slaves and suffered, to heighten our awareness of those who suffer right now in this world, to push us to partner in the fight for social justice. As Rabbi Karen Bender taught us to ask in a session on Seder prep in 1999 for the Women’s Rabbinic Network, “What are we going to change tonight?” I offer this teaching from Bryan Stevenson as a starting point:

Get proximate to the problem.
Get close to the things that matter,
get close to the places
where there is inequality and suffering,
get close to the spaces
where people feel oppressed,
burdened, and abused…
See what it does
to your capacity
to make a difference,
see what it does to you.

What are some of the problems to which you’ve gotten proximate in the past? What qualities of yours allowed you to get close? What happened – were you able to foster some change? How did you change, grow?

There is a double irony for us now in Stevenson’s urging to “get proximate.” First, perhaps use this as an opportunity to articulate and reflect upon the cost of Covid isolation - what has changed for you? How have you changed because of the years of imposed distancing?

Second, most of us are far away from the centers of heartbreak in Israel, in Gaza, in Ukraine - how are you responding to that distance? How have you been attempting to be “proximate” even thousands of miles away? What are you wanting to accomplish now in this time of fear and suffering? How can you participate in change even when unable to get proximate?

I doubt that efforts to address societal problems can meet with much success when undertaken solo – With what admired friend[s] or mentor[s] would you like to stand “shoulder to shoulder” in tikkun olam work even when you cannot be physically together? What might you hope to do with them toward the betterment of national and/or international problems? What organizations do you want to support, align yourself with? When committing to tzedukah, what is a meaningful level for you? How do you decide that?

IV –
Broken Matzah

On the New Jersey transit train
I pulled my particularity
out of a brown paper bag:
one of four broken pieces
of buttered matzah.
Slowly, delicately
I proceeded with my dinner.

The young man across the aisle
in his dark business suit,
pale skin, wavy black hair,
looked to me Italian
but I admit I’m not good at that.

He seemed uncomfortable,
not so much with the chremzel
I carefully dipped
into a little puddle of sour cream,
nor even with my public
consumption of food –
probably I was brought up
to know better, but I was brought up
so long ago I’ve misplaced
some of my mother’s niceties –

no, I think it was the matzah
that did it, it was the matzah
that singled me out,
the unmistakable display
of my particularity:
four broken pieces of buttered matzah.

Or maybe he didn’t care at all,
didn’t notice,
maybe his breathing didn’t
become slightly irregular,
maybe it was all
my imagination,
or my breathing
becoming slightly irregular.

How like my mother I am, after all,
who trained us in our largely
Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood
not to wear our old playclothes
outside on Sundays
so as not to offend our Christian
neighbors on their way home from church.

In those days I took her at her word;
now I wonder as the train
pulls into Penn Station
if Marie Brady who lived across the street
ever noticed us in our Sunday finery,
ever thought it curious
that we dressed up on her Sabbath,
ever questioned our carefully guarded
particularity, ever saw close up
a buttered piece of matzah.

chremzel – a fried cheese pancake, an Eastern European delicacy

What is this poem about? What feelings, thoughts, questions does it evoke for you? What’s the significance of her “breathing becoming slightly irregular?”

Why be self-conscious eating matzah and other ethnic food on the train? Why the mother’s caution about offending Christian neighbors? (The matzah itself is a symbol of ancient oppression and threat; the reference to chremzel as an Eastern European delicacy also calls up memories of a lost world, Jewish life savaged.) What shadows of past generations might you discern in the poem? Does this poem have increased resonance again, now, for us? How so?

Do you think you are easily identifiable as being Jewish? How? What are your own “particularities,” your own fault lines, between your Jewish identity and your American identity? Under what circumstances do you feel self-conscious or misunderstood or concerned or discriminated against or threatened as a Jew in America? How have you addressed, how might you address, your layered identity as a Jewish American/an American Jew?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hope these materials enrich the meaning of your Pesach celebration. Hag sameach!

As ever, immense gratitude to Rabbi Lisa Feld, spiritual leader of Bnai Tikveh in Canton MA, whose numerous wide and deep talents as a rabbi and a superb webmaster have helped to make my spiritual/activist dreams a reality for all of you!

Reaching for Meaning at the Seder Table