I’ve been preparing for Passover since February. While this was a year with a leap month, it was necessary. First the Hakol monthly bulletin deadline was February 15, just like always. Announcements of seders, chamatz selling etc had to be done. Then the Academy for Jewish Religion announced it was putting out a haggadah supplement, Seder Interrupted. I submitted a piece that was accepted. It is avsilable on Amazon and as a pdf download, (https://ajr.edu/forms/haggadah-supplement-download/) and even if the seders themselves are completed for this year, the texts are still relevant.
This is a Passover like no other. At least not in my lifetime. Parts of the seder resonate so deeply. What is freedom? How do we achieve freedom? What does it mean to “let all who are hungry come and eat? What is our responsibility to feed the hungry? Can we drink wine? Can we rejoice at all? How do we appropriately remember the hostages in this context? What does even opening a door mean when on October 7th people struggled to hold doors closed to their safe rooms? Should we have a seder at all? What about safety and security concerns? Oy!
And yet, we must. Even in the people of Israel’s darkest days we have found ways to remember, to tell the story, to sing songs, to ask questions and demand answers, to dare to dream, to dare to hope for a better world.
I have been involved in 4 seders. Each class at Torah School learned blessings and we stitched it all together. They tasted two kinds of parsley, three kinds of matzah and two kinds of charoset. Then I attended the Govenor’s Seder where I delivered a copy of Seder Interrupted. It was very poignant and deeply meaningful to be with our elected officials and some of our leading Jewish professionals from throughout Illinois. And like we did at our community seder in Elgin, we were joined by some clergy of other faiths. That was one of the most soulful renditions of Hatikvah I have ever heard, song by a black pastor who had recently song it on an IDF military base. Hatikvah means The Hope. The whole event brought me hope.
My home seder was almost as I have always imagined it in this home. We rented our home with visions of large Passover seders. But the pandemic interrupted that, then my bone marrow transplant. Passover is the most celebrated American Jewish holiday. There are layers and layers of memories and feelings. No one will forget this year either. To the food, many of our traditional dishes, chopped liver, matzah ball soup gefilte fish (jarred), chocolate covered matzah, we added Israeli chicken and Israeli salad. But its not really about the food. It is about the words of the Haggadah and coming together as family and friends. We did all of that. And it is really amazing to watch Jack, my other brother from another mother, run a Passover kitchen. And Kevin wash dishes just as quickly as Jack.
Over and over again the words resonate. “Let all who are hungry come and eat.” “Our ancestors were wandering Arameans.” The role of Shifrah and Puah, the midwives who helped birth the baby boys, just like my doctor’s mother and aunt did in Athens during the war. The words of Anne Frank. The words of Martin Niemöller. They came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up…in light of rising anti-semitism and protests of college campuses. “G-d heard their groans and G-d remembered the covenant.” Will G-d remember the hostages? The plagues and the piece that I wrote. A drop of blood, A drop of wine…too many to count this year. These words: “O G-d teach us to rejoice in freedom, but not in its cost for us and our enemies. Let there come a day when violence is not more and we shall be free to rejoice without sadness, to sing without tears.”
We talked about the orange. Both versions. We actually ate the orange. That was a first for me. We opened the door for Elijah and read Alden Solovy’s powerful poem that Elijah will not come this year. (Really has he come any year? Every year we wait for him. Every year we are reminded that the work of redemption is up to us). And then that seder was over.
The synagogue seder had 75 people. The tables were beautiful. We added certain elements to meet the moment. Bracelets like those of University of Michigan Hillel that say “We will dance again. Am Yisrael Chai.” So many of the wounded, the captured, the dead were dancing at a music festival and they have taken up that cry. We provided tambourines like Miriam had and we sang with gusto. We left a chair empty. For all those who could not attend. All those hostages. We placed a photo of Omri Miran, the cousin of Simon’s niece, still being held hostage and we tied it with yellow ribbon. We painted our nails yellow as Hadassah suggested to remember. The children danced with our omer offering. Day One. Did we hit the right notes? The right balance? Others will have to say.
There is one more thing about this Passover that is worth talking about, In some traditional Haggadahs just before the opening of the door for Elijah there is a reading called Sh’foch Chamatcha. Pour out Your Wrath. A congregant came to me and said, “Isn’t this a good year to use this prayer.” I was not so familiar with this prayer. Often it is not included in family haggadahs, brevity after dinner being important. It can rankle theologically. It feels a little too “G-d is on our side.” or G-d as warrior G-d for me to be comfortable with. I decided I would use it as the basis of the Fast of the First Born Siyyum.
I learned a lot. This prayer first appears in the Machzor Vitry. It consisted first of just four verses, four being a good Haggadah number!Six additional verses are attributed to Rashi. They are in a 13th century English Haggadah and also to Menachem Meiri and in Spain, thus supporting a theory that they were in response to the crusades. And not surprisingly, there are many variations in custom, as is true for much of Judaism, so not entirely surprising I was less familiar with it. To our modern ears, many have felt it inappropriate to call for G-d’s wrath, in many of the same arguments as with Aleinu. But I found one that was especially important to highlight even as the JPS Commentary of the Haggadah says, “one could almost call a hoax” Chayyim Bloch (1881-1971) cites an unusual version in a manuscript Haggadah that was compiled in 1591 and lost during the Holocaust, except for his notes. But like Rav Abraham Issac Kook taught that the antidote for sinat chinam, baseless hatred is ahavat chinam, baseless love, this reading seems to call G-d to pour out G-d’s love!
Pour Out Your Wrath and Pour Out Your Love
Pour out Your love on the nations that know You
And on the kingdoms that call upon Your Name
For the lcvingkindness that they perform with Jacob
And their defense of the People of Israel
In the face of those that would devour them.
May they be privileged to see
The Sukkah of peace spread for Your chosen ones
And rejoice in the Joy of Your nations
Chayyim Block (1881-1973) based on a prayer in a manuscript haggadah complied in 1521 and then lost in the Holocaust. (T’ruah, the rabbinic call for human rights)
I took that message to heart and compiled my own version, drawing heavily on the 13 attributes of the Divine, which talks about G-d’s love. G-d’s limitless love.
Pour out Your Wrath and Pour out Your love
Pour out Your Wrath, yes, and also
Pour out Your compassion
Pour out Your graciousness
Pour out Your patience
Pour out Your kindness
Extend it to the thousandth generations
We are the 1000th generation.
Forgive us, our inequity, our transgressions, our sins.
Forgive our fears
And yes,
Pour out Your love
Pour out Your chesed.
On them…and on us.
Give us Your strength
For You are our might, and our strength and our song.
Then, and only then,
We might be able to build a world on love
To sing of a world of Your love.
Then and only then,
We might be able to have safety
Only then may we open the door
Welcoming Elijah
Where the hearts of the children are turned to the parents
Where the hearts of the parents are turned to the children
Open the door to
A world of peace
Where everyone may sit under their vine and fig tree
And none will make us afraid.
Pour out Your Wrath and Pour out Your love
L’shanah ha’ba’ah b’rushalim.