This Supplement contains readings which can be added to the traditional Haggadah to make the Seder more contemporary and, hopefully, more meaningful. They come from a variety of sources that I (and my father before I started) have collected over the years, as well as from Rabbi Fred's treasure trove of liturgy. Some are for younger children, some for older children, and most for adults.
I have suggested a place at which each reading can be inserted within the traditional Haggadah, but it goes without saying that each Reconstructionist will decide for himself or herself whether, when and how to use these materials.
David Silberman—April, 1998
Introductory Readings
Before Lighting Candles
Before Eating the Karpas
Yachatz
Avadeem Hayeenu
Readings on the Exodus From Egypt
Maror
Shulchan Orech
Tzafun—Eating the Afikomen
Readings on the Holocaust
When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews, it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.
Later, when his disciple, the Magid of Mezritch, had occasion to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say, "Master of Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer." And again the miracle would be accomplished.
Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sasov, in order to save his people, would go into the forest and say: "I do not know how to light the fire, and I do not know the prayer, but I know the place, and this must be sufficient." It was sufficient, and the miracle was accomplished and the misfortune averted..
Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: "I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do it to tell the story, and this must be sufficient." And it was sufficient.
This is the famous Hasidic story. But in our time, the threat was not averted. Perhaps the moral for us today is that it is no longer enough to tell the story, not enough to light the fire, not enough even to say the prayer. If the story we are about to tell is to have meaning, if the prayers we are about to say are to have effect, we must learn to act.
* * *
When they came for the Communists, I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Trade-Unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Trade-unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up.
Rev. Martin Neimoeller
Hannah Senesch was a Hungarian woman who arrived in Palestine in 1938, at age seventeen. She felt a sense of destiny, that she had a mission to fulfill. This inner calling led her to enlist in a special military unit that was to warn Jews in Hungary of Hitler's lethal plans. Members of the unit were parachuted into Yugoslavia and from there made their way by foot into Hungary. Hannah Senesch was captured, tortured, and put to death at the age of 20. She wrote this poem in prison in Budapest before her execution:
We dip the green vegetable -- the symbol of nature's renewal -- into salt water, which symbolizes the tears we shed when we were slaves. We rejoice that he world is green for us and for so many; we mourn for those for whom it is not.
Matzah symbolizes both slavery and freedom. We refer to it at the start of the Seder as Lechem oni, our "bread of affliction," because our Egyptian oppressors insisted that we live on Matzah and little else. But Matzah was also what we ate as we left Egypt, and by struggling for our freedom we turned this "bread of affliction" into a "bread of freedom." The matzah is thus a tangible reminder that tomorrow will not necessarily be like today. The Matzah teaches us, too, that if we value freedom we -- like our ancestors in Egypt -- must be prepared to seize opportunities as they arise. To let the opportunity pass because we are not prepared for it is to betray the hope of humankind.
We formally begin the Seder by uncovering the Matzah, recalling our suffering in Egypt, and for that reason inviting all who are hungry to come and eat. This prayer, written more than 2,300 years ago was composed in Aramaic rather than Hebrew because Aramaic was the language which was spoken at the time and was most easily understood.
According to the Kaballah, the angels do not understand Aramaic. By beginning in Aramaic, we can speak directly to God without intermediaries. At the same time, by beginning in Aramaic, we remind ourselves that where there is poverty and homelessness, we dare not rely on angels for solutions.
For the words of the Ha lachma -- let all who are hungry come and eat -- must serve as our reminder that a hungry person is not a free person and of our obligation to put an end to hunger. The Pharaohs and Hitlers of history have made countless attempts to demoralize us by first crushing our bodies, hoping that our spirits would be easy prey. We cannot allow them to succeed.
We think of those in our own community who are homeless, shunned by us as we step around them. We remember those whose lives are oppressed by poverty. We think of the children who, in a world which produces enough food to feed everyone, continue to die from starvation. All these we remember tonight, and our freedom is diminished by their continued deprivation.
At the same time, as we say these words we lift our eyes from the Haggadah and address those who are with us tonight. Sometimes, in our concern for humanity, we overlook the needs of those human beings who are closest to us. At this point we also reflect on our feelings for one another, for family, and for friends. It is time to let those who are right next to us known that their needs are important to us: that we are concerned, that we care, and that we will always be there.
The Ma nishtana calls our attention to a unique night, a period of darkness unlike any other.
There is so much darkness in life. Darkness that clouds our vision of one another. Darkness that pits us one against the other. Yet in the dark of night, the Jewish nation was born, surrounded by darkness while guided by the luminous rays of freedom.
Only on Passover do all the special observances, the mitzvot, apply only at night. And so we ask, Ma nishtana -- why is this night different?
Because on this night we experience our freedom. Because on this night we not only commemorate the moment of our birth but we express the very meaning of our existence as a people. Because dark as our lives may seem, lost though the world may have become, on this night we reaffirm that we still believe in the power of light -- to illuminate our lives and our potential, and to be a radiant force for all humankind. This is our message, and our mission. And we will not rest until the dark night again shines like the day.
The Survival Kit Haggadah (adapted)
I lived my childhood in a world so dense with Jews that I thought we were the great majority, and kindness had to be extended to the others because, as my mother said, everyone wants to live like a person. Down the hill under the Southern Boulevard El, families lived, people in lovely shades of light and darkest brown. My mother and sister explained that they were treated unkindly; they had in fact been slaves in another part of the country in another time.
"Like us?" I asked.
"Like us," my father said year after year at seders when he told the story in a rush of Hebrew. In this way I began to understand in my own time and place that we had been slaves in Egypt and brought out of bondage for some reason. One of the reasons, clearly, was to tell the story again and again -- that we had been strangers and slaves in Egypt and therefore knew what we were talking about when we cried out against pain and oppression. In fact, we were obligated by knowledge to do so.
Grace Paley
The Hebrew word Mitzrayim -- Egypt -- comes from the root tzar, which means narrow, constrained, inhibited. When the Haggadah tells us to feel as if we have left Mitzrayim, it is telling us to break out of our own narrowness and constraints.
For people can be enslaved in more ways than one. People can be enslaved to themselves. When laziness or cowardice keep us from doing what we know to be right, we are slaves. When we stay silent because of what others may say, we are slaves. When we are so involved in our own lives that we become indifferent to the needs of others, we are slaves. When envy, bitterness and jealousy sour our joy and darken our days, we are slaves, shackled by the chains of our own forging.
How deep these enslavements have scarred the world. Pesach calls upon us to put an end to all forms of slavery -- to enslavements that warp the spirit and destroy the soul, even though they may leave the flesh free. Pesach summons us to freedom.
THE FOUR CHILDREN AND THE RAPPERS
Well Hey you all! Glad you came along.
To hear our story told in rhyme and song.
It's about four kids and the questions they raise.
They think about Pesach in different ways.
One child is wise, one argues a lot.
One's got a brain that's really hot.
One's so very young he can't yet speak.
Well, now, let's take a closer peek.
The wise one asks, "What's the meaning and cause
Of all these customs, rules and laws?"
Since she'll understand the entire story,
The Torah says, "Tell it in all its glory!"
The kid who argues has an attitude
A Seder just ain't for this cool dude.
A Jewish past he says he don't need.
If he'd been a slave, he'd never be freed.
The third child's gentle. Keep your story plain.
Long explanations would be inane.
When she asks "What's this?" you can tell her then
"We escaped from Egypt. We became free men."
Son number four cannot be heard.
The kid's too young -- doesn't speak a word.
If you waited for a question, it could take two years.
So begin the story for him with our hopes and tears.
Now we sure do hope you enjoyed our rap.
Did it cause you to wear a thinking cap?
Kids are different -- both our daughters and our sons.
But kids are equally important, each and every one.
The Discovery Haggadah (adapted)
VEHEE SHEH-AM-DAH -- IN EVERY GENERATION
In Nazi Germany, Rabbi Joachim Prinz recalls, Passover "was the great day of hope for delivery from our own Egypt. The whips which beat the naked bodies of Jewish slaves in Egypt were the very same that struck our bodies. Slavery was no longer an abstract term, foreign to the world of the twentieth century. We could now identify with the slaves for we, ourselves, were third-class citizens, and therefore slaves."
"The Passover slogan, `From slavery unto freedom,' because the song of our lives. If the slaves of Egypt could be delivered from their fate, so would we. And when we read Ve-hee She-am-dah -- `Not merely one persecutor has stood up against us, but in every generation they persecuted us to destroy us' -- the identification was complete. The persecution was upon us. But some day we would be saved."
Rabbi Prinz adds: "I did not know then that I was later to sing, `We shall overcome some day' with Martin Luther King. But when I did, I remembered the songs of the seder table under the Hitler regime."
In every generation, someone arises to destroy our freedom.
In every generation, we ourselves must go forth from slavery to freedom.
God said to Moses at the Burning Bush, "I have heard the outcry, the shriek of pain, that rises from the oppressed. Go, face Pharaoh! -- and I will be with you."
Tonight in our generation we hear shrieks of pain in our own country:
the moans of a woman who is dying of breast cancer -- cancer caused by a pesticide poured uncaring into earth and air;
the wails of hunger from a baby whose mother has been cut off the welfare rolls;
the sobs of a man whose body is at last surrendering to AIDS
the coughs of the janitor who caught tuberculosis from the man next door who could not afford to see the doctor after the health insurance stopped;
the tears of a tenth-grade student who has been expelled from school because her father is an undocumented alien;
the last gasps of a thousand dying species of ferns, whales, frogs, owls.
These outcries rise to Heaven and pour into the deepest wellsprings of the earth. These outcries are heard in the homes and workplaces of most Americans, who do not want the sick or the earth, the children or the old, the disemployed or the overworked, the poor or the lonely, to suffer.
But increasingly our rulers, our political system, turn a deaf ear to these outcries.
Let us at this very table hear the cry of pain, let us turn to face the Pharaohs of our own generation. Let us agree tonight, this very Night of Freedom, what action we will take this week, the week of freedom, the week of Passover.
The Shalom Center, a division of ALEPH
[The following readings may be inserted during the Maggid -- the telling of the story of the Exodus]
When God set out to pick a leader for the Israelites, the most important quality God was looking for was patience. God wanted somebody who would not give up, no matter how bad things looked, no matter how much the people complained, no matter how long it took to get to Israel. So God set out to make a patience test to find the right person for the job.
The angels suggested tests to God. One angel came with a tangled ball of string and said "Whoever has the patience to untangle this ball of string is our person." Another angel came with a Rubik's cube and said "Whoever can solve this puzzle is our person for sure."
But God had a different idea. He caused a bush to start burning in the desert. A few shepherds passed it and walked away. Bushes are not special. And bushes on fire are not that special, so the shepherds didn't take the time to sit long enough to watch the miracle happen. But Moses saw the bush, sat down and watched and observed that the bush continued to burn and burn and the fire never went out. Moses was the only one who waited long enough to notice. And so God chose Moses to lead the people of Israel.
Rabbi Mark Gellman (adapted)
In Pharaoh's palace, a debate raged as to whether to let the Jews go. One advisor, Jethro, spoke in favor of Moses request; he was rewarded by God. Another advisor, Bilaam, urged Pharaoh to keep the Jews in slavery and continue killing Jewish boys; he was killed by God. A third advisor, Job, refused to take sides; he wanted to be neutral. God caused him to suffer with a case of boils.
Why this punishment? At times of crisis, at moments of peril, one has no right to choose abstention. When the life or death -- or simply the well-being -- of a community is at stake, neutrality becomes unacceptable, for it always aids and abets the oppressor, never the victim.
Job thought that it would not help to speak out because Pharaoh had already made up his mind. Job was made to suffer from a disease which caused him to cry out not because doing so helped, but simply because it hurt. The lesson is clear: there are times we must speak out not because it will help, but because it hurts.
Elie Wiesel
Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev commented that the true miracle of the Exodus occurred when the Jews decided to follow the instruction of Moses rather than Pharaoh and to slaughter sheep, which were worshipped as Gods in Egypt. That God can wreak plagues, split the sea, and all the rest -- these are no source of surprise to the person of faith. But Israel's courage to defy the Egyptians -- that is truly worthy of being called miraculous.
When the Jews reached the Red Sea they were paralyzed with indecision. Each tribe said to the other "You go into the sea first." As they stood there bickering, Moses proceeded to pray. God said to Moses, "There is a time to pray briefly, and a time to pray at length. My children are in distress, the sea shuts them in, and the enemy is pursuing, and you, you stand here adding prayer on prayer. Speak to the people of Israel and tell them to go forward."
To this Midrash we add: We all stand on the shores of the Red Sea every day of our lives. We stand with every decision we make, with every human encounter we have. It is more comfortable to stay with what we know. It is more comfortable to stay in Mitzrayim (which literally means narrow places). And so we pray for the courage of our ancestors, to go forward into freedom.
Blood, vermin, epidemic -- the catalogue of the plagues of Egypt. Polluted earth, water and air -- our catalogue -- ozone holes, acid rain, radon gas, meltdown, genetic flaws, dead rivers and lakes, dying oceans and extinct species. We are the Egypt, and we are the Pharaohs whose hearts have been hardened and who refuse to let our Mother the Earth heal. We must shout a "Dayenu" to that, and begin to act.
I feel ashamed looking at the Seder plate, its signs of life, the egg, the green, the salt water of the seas. It all tastes bitter and the Charoset does not sweeten it enough.
As we are observant of the laws of Peach, so we must become observant about what is helpful to Earth; and like chametz on Pesach, we must avoid what destroys her. Chad Gadya's domino effect is no longer funny. The Angel of Death is at the ultimate end.
We must redeem it with two zuzzim. As well as a monetary sum, zuz means "move," and we must move from our present way to a new and eco-redeeming way.
Reb Zalman Shachter-Shalami
The word Dayenu means "It would have been enough" or "we would have been satisfied." A Jewish philosopher once asked, "What is the opposite of nihilism?" And he answered, "Dayenu," the ability to be thankful for what we have received, for what we are.
But in truth, no single one of the acts we mention would have been enough. We say Dayenu to celebrate each step toward freedom as if it were enough, and then we go on to the next. If we were to reject each step forward because it is not the whole of liberation, we could never achieve total liberation. But the opposite is also true: if we were to be content with just a single step, our journey would be incomplete. We cannot rest until all people are free.
How many and how hard are the tasks the Redeemer has set before us:
If we were to free the peoples of the world but not share our food and end all huger, Dayenu v'lo Dayenu.
If we were to share our food and end all hunger but not beat the swords of every nation into plowshares, Dayenu v'lo Dayenu.
If we were to beat the swords of every nation into plowshares, but not free our earth and air of poison, Dayenu v'lo Dayenu.
If we were to free our earth and air of poison, but not free all humans to be persons, Dayenu v'lo Dayenu.
If we were to free all humans to be persons, but not to free ourselves to know You, Dayenu v'lo Dayenu.
Then how great, doubled and redoubled, are the claims the Redeemer makes upon our effort! You call upon us to struggle, work, share, give, think, plan, organize, sit-in, speak out, dream, hope and pray for the great Redemption: to end the oppression of all people, to share our food and end hunger, to beat the swords into plowshares, to free our earth and air of poison, to free all women, men and children to be persons, and to free ourselves to know You.
Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Seders (adapted)
ON THE SYMBOLS OF PASSOVER
After reading about the meaning of Pesach, Matzah, oo-Maror add:
In the days not so long ago when women were just beginning to be rabbis, Susanah Heschel was traveling in Florida, the Land of Oranges. One night she spoke at a synagogue about the emerging equality of women in Jewish life -- as rabbis, teachers and students of Torah, synagogue presidents, and in all other ways.
After she spoke a man arose in wrath, red with fury. "A woman belongs on the bimah," he said, "as much as bread belongs on the Seder plate."
"No," said our sister Susanah. "The teachings of women do not violate the tradition but renew it. Women bring to the bimah what an orange would bring to the Seder plate: transformation, not transgression."
So ever since that day, we place an orange on the Seder plate, for it belongs there as a symbol that women belong wherever Jews carry on a sacred life.
ALEPH (adapted)
It is good to give thanks,
Not because God needs our praise,
But because we do.
To awaken to wonder,
to holiness, to God.
It is good to give thanks
for through thanksgiving comes awakening.
Rami Shapiro
After making the Motzi and eating the Matzah add:
All during the year we eat leavened bread. We say a blessing over it, we use it on Shabbat and holy-days and ordinary days. Clearly there is nothing wrong with these loaves that get all puffed up from the yeast that works mysteriously inside them.
But sometimes we put yeast not only into the bread but in ourselves. We get puffed up, too: in pride, in appetite, in self-importance, and in greed. Pride and greed destroy the fabric of society. We feel unsatisfied with our own selves, with simple needs. Our appetites lead us to take advantage of others, to seek power over others.
The redemption from Egypt was accompanied by the obligation to completely rid ourselves of hametz -- that is, eliminating pride and haughtiness. To guard against the self-righteousness that puffs us up, during Pesach we eat only matzah, and not hametz.
In matzah you find nothing extra. It is just flour and water -- no yeast. Nothing rises, nothing expands, nothing is bloated or inflated. The Hasidim talked of Pesach as a time to become a "matzah person" -- to get rid of that which is bloated or inflated. The matzah person is a person without leaven, a person who hasn't risen and who feels, perceives and understands human needs.
The words hametz and matzah are quite similar, and the line that separates them is small: hametz is defined as any mixture of flour and water that has been allowed to ferment for more than 18 minutes. It takes mere moments for unleaven to become leaven, and it takes even less time for good intentions to become subverted.
The Art of Jewish Living (adapted)
It is not enough to talk about what our ancestors experienced. We must ourselves taste it so we know what oppression means. That is why we eat the maror, or bitter herb.
The bitter herbs are dipped into Haroset which symbolizes the mortar and bricks with which our ancestors wee forced to construct cities. The sweet taste of the Haroset combines with the bitter taste of the Maror to emphasize that life is bitter-sweet, and that no matter how bitter the present appears, we should look forward to better days.
Before eating, add the following readings:
We have discussed liberation and sung its praises. We have recounted oppression and remembered its tears. We have numbered our blessings and offered our gratitude. And now, with pangs of hunger in our bellies, we prepare to indulge in a feast of redemption.
Still others cannot celebrate liberation. Others yet shed tears. Others cannot yet sing out, "Dayenu." Others yet hunger for redemption.
Each of us has the power to act as an agent of redemption, if only we can see ourselves as God's partners in pursuing justice.
I can stay the tears of others, if I can see myself as diminished by their sorrows. I can hasten the time when everyone will be able to rejoice in freedom, if I can see myself as the companion of those fighting against oppression. I can honor the history and struggles of my own people, if I can respond to the struggles of people everywhere to gain dignity and deliverance from bondage.
When I look at myself in the mirror after this celebration of freedom, who will I see?
Rabbi Jack Moline
The reason God picked Moses to help free the Jews is because Moses was the only free Jew. Moses had never been a slave and had lived his whole life as a prince in the palace of Pharaoh before he ran away. There was, however, one problem with picking Moses: Moses knew that he was free, but he did not know that he was Jewish.
Moses' mother did her best to teach Moses that he was Jewish. But Moses was just a baby when he was taken from his mother.
Years later, when Moses was a grown man, he liked to take walks at night. One night he wandered into the neighborhood of the Jewish slaves and he saw in a window Shabbat candles. Moses didn't understand what they were doing, but the light seemed familiar to him. He remembered that light from somewhere in his past.
The next night during his walk Moses overheard a Jewish woman telling bible stories. The stories sounded familiar to him but he was not sure where he had heard them before.
On the third night Moses smelled something that pulled him along. Following the smell he came to the house of a Jewish slave family where the mother was making chicken soup. Moses took a deep smell and then screamed, "MY GOD, THIS IS CHICKEN SOUP! THIS IS THE STUFF MY MOTHER MADE FOR ME WHEN I WAS A LITTLE KID! I MUST BE A JEW TOO!"
That night, Moses still looked like an Egyptian, but he felt like a Jew. That night, God knew everything would be all right. And so that night God lit up the burning bush and waited for Moses.
Rabbi Marc Gellman (adapted)
Religion is all about seeking. It is about seeking God, seeking truth, seeking faith, seeking the way. Most religions center on seeking because the things that are worthwhile seem to be hidden. Life is a puzzle, and religion a quest.
Jews prepare for Pesach in the night, searching for the hidden hametz; we end the Seder meal in the night, searching for the hidden portion of the matzah. To know there is incompleteness and concealment is to know that we must work for completeness and understanding so the time will come when the lost will be found, the broken made whole, the hidden revealed.
The Feast of Freedom and The Art of Jewish Living (adapted)
At this point in the seder Jewish communities, beset by persecution during the Crusades, opened their doors and recited the angry plea "Shefoch Chamatchah-- pour out your wrath upon the nations who do not know You."
In other communities during the same period, the hope for redemption was so intense that they sang to invoke the Prophet Elijah who, according to legend, would herald an era of Messianic peace, justice and healing.
We open our doors now, at the end of this bloody century, with the need to act on both impulses. The crimes that we see -- the rape and torture of innocents, ethnic cleansing, the destruction of entire cities and cultures - cry out for retribution beyond our limited capacity. And our longing for peace, for healing of earth, body and spirit, still brings the hope-drenched melody of Eliyahu Hanavi to our lips.
As we read the traditional words of the Haggadah let us ask, too, that God pour out her love on our allies, and on all those who struggle for human freedom and dignity:
Pour out your love on the nations who have known you and on the kingdoms who call upon your name. For they show loving-kindness to the seed of Jacob and they defend your people Israel, and all oppressed peoples, from those who would devour them alive. May they live to see the sukkah of peace spread over your chosen ones, and to participate in the joy of your nations.
The Journey Continues and A Different Night (adapted)
We opened the door for Elijah, and sang his song, as a sign of our faith that the coming of the Messianic age is not an impossible dream. But if Elijah did not come tonight -- or if we are unsure whether he has come -- we must close the door against anyone who tell us that our society, our people, our world, is messianic, ideal, the best possible. If we did not see Elijah enter, it means God has asked each of us here tonight to help realize the world for which all people yearn.
On Wings of Freedom (adapted)
In recent years, some Jewish families have begun placing two ceremonial goblets on their Seder tables: the traditional one, filled with wine, for Elijah the Prophet, and a second one, filled with water, for Miriam the Prophetess.
Miriam is a central figure in the Passover drama. She stands guard loyally when her baby brother Moses is set floating on the Nile, and she arranges for a wetnurse -- Moses' own mother -- to take care of the child. Miriam leads the Hebrew people in singing and dancing -- that most natural expression of religious joy -- after they cross the Red Sea. And, she dies by the kiss of God; the Angel of Death, we are told, has no power over her.
We place Miriam's goblet on the Seder table as a counterweight to the cup of Elijah. The latter is a symbol of messianic redemption at the end of time; the former, of redemption in our present lives. Elijah lived in the desert as a lone, howling visionary, focused on the millennium; Miriam sojourned in the same wilderness but she accompanied the Hebrew people. Tireless tribal parent, she offered hope and renewal at every stage of the journey.
Susan Schnur
After the Shefoch Chamatchah it has become customary to recall the Holocaust. The following readings may be added:
Let us pause now to remember the Holocaust, an obligation that surely must rank with our obligation to remember our slavery in Egypt. For just as we were all in Egypt, so, too, were we all in Nazi Germany.
We invite the souls of all who are missing, the souls of all who were snatched from our midst, to sit with us together at the Seder. This invitation was uttered by Seder celebrants in the Vilna ghetto in 1942, and we repeat it here tonight. For on this night all Jews are united in history -- and in hope. We were all in Mitzrayim. We were all at Sinai. We were all in the hell that was the Holocaust. And we will all be present at the final redemption.
The Jews in Bergen-Belsen had no matzah for Pesach in 1944. It was decided that it was permissible to eat hametz, and that the following prayer should be recited before eating:
Our Father in Heaven, behold it is evident and known to You that it is our desire to do Your will and to celebrate the festival of Pesach by eating matzah and by observing the prohibition against eating hametz. But our hearts are pained that the enslavement prevents us from doing so, and our lives are in danger. Behold we are ready to fulfill Your commandment, "And you shall live by them and not die by them." Therefore our prayer to You is that You may keep us alive and save us and rescue us speedily, that we may observe Your commandments and do Your will and serve You with a perfect heart. Amen.
In the presence of eyes
which witnessed the slaughter,
which see the oppression
the heart could not bear,
and as witness the heart
that once taught compassion
until days came to pass
that crushed human feeling,
I have taken an oath: To remember it all,
to remember, not once to forget!
Forget not one thing to the last generation
when degradation shall cease,
to the last, to its ending,
when the rod of instruction
shall have come to conclusion.
An oath: Not in vain passed over the night of the terror.
An oath: No morning shall see me at fleshpots again.
An oath: Lest from this we learned nothing.Avraham Shlonsky
In June, 1964, seventeen rabbis were arrested while demonstrating with Rev. Martin Luther King against segregation in St. Augustine, Florida. From their jail cell they wrote to explain why they had come to St. Augustine:
We came because we realized that injustice in St. Augustine, as anywhere else, diminishes the humanity of each of us. We came to St. Augustine mainly because we could not stay away.
We came because we could not stand silently by our brother's blood. We had done that too many times before. We came in the hope that the God of us all would accept our small involvement as partial atonement for the many things we wish we had done before and often.
We came as Jews who remember the millions of faceless people who stood quietly, watching the smoke rise from Hitler's crematoria. We came because we know that second only to silence, the greatest danger to humanity is loss of faith in humanity's capacity to act.
We hope we have strengthened the morale of St. Augustine's Blacks as they strive to claim their dignity; we know they have strengthened ours.
The story we have told, is not yet done. It begins with them, then; it continues with us, now. We remember not out of curiosity or nostalgia, but because it is our turn to add to the story.
Our challenge this year, as every year, is to feel the Exodus, to open the gates of time and become as one with those who crossed the Red Sea from slavery to freedom.
Our challenge this year, as every year, is to know the Exodus, to behold all those in every land who have yet to make the crossing.
Our challenge this day, as every day, is to reach out our hands to them and help them cross to freedomland.
We know how arduous is the struggle, how very deep the waters to be crossed, and how treacherous their tides.
But we know, too, that slaves do become free, and that tyrants are destroyed. We possess a memory of the impossible that became possible, and we affirm that tomorrow will not necessarily be like today.
Once it was by miracles; today it is by defiance and devotion.
Adapted from Leonard Fein
April, 1998