You were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Here, I wrote a Haggadah

Every year on Passover, Jewish families assemble a plate of symbolic objects, retell themselves and their children the story of Exodus, and celebrate freedom in a ritual called a Seder. We’ve done it for thousands of years.

If you are a child, a Seder is long and boring. Once at a Seder when I was 6 and my sister was 4, we went to the bathroom together, got naked, came out, and started dancing around the table, conga-line style, singing “doo-doo doo-doo doo doo!” For my family, the re-telling of that story, too, became part of all subsequent seders.

I am deeply OK with defining myself as The Kid That Got Naked And Danced Around The Table. I am increasingly wary, however, of Jews defining ourselves as The People God Freed From Slavery (who then wandered in the desert until being delivered to freedom in Israel).

I recently met someone in their twenties, and not an hour into speaking, he was spilling his guts to me about the horrors of his childhood. (I did that to so many people in my twenties.) A few weeks later, like the insufferable know-it-all that I am, I told him (because I wish someone had told me) that his trauma is not the most important thing about him. Not what makes him interesting or valuable.

What I think is most important, most interesting, most valuable about that person—about any person or people— is not the story itself but the values he has come to develop as a result. It’s that he decided and has managed to not be like the people that failed to raise him, and has instead dared to be the person that those people should have been.

Passover is about teaching our children who we are as a people. I was taught that the story of Exodus is our story. But I think if we’re not careful with that concept, if we lean too much into the story itself, we risk romanticizing the idea that we are a “nation” of people, different than or disconnected from any other people. (Imaginary lines drawn in molecule soup!)

Zionism is based in nationalism—in a seductive story about how we are this tiny, persecuted people with an impossibly unlikely 2,000-year history of narrowly escaping one annihilation after another. I mean … it’s true and it’s truly remarkable. But if we focus on the parts of the story where we were persecuted, we end up thinking, “and now we need to protect ourselves because everyone is out to get us.” And apparently, we end up willing to massacre Palestinians as a result.

If we turn what happened to us into our identity, it becomes easier to fall into the trap of believing that our trauma bestows us with moral purity. And when we believe that, we not only undermine our own agency by writing ourselves as victims, but we become more willing to do harm. This also makes it impossible to heal.

What makes sense to me is to define yourself/ourselves not by the story of what happened to you/us, but by the values taught in its text. In Exodus, it’s “And you shall not wrong a stranger, nor shall you oppress him; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”¹ In the Jewish story it’s “don’t annihilate people.”

I’ve always loved Passover because it’s a celebration of freedom and a moment where, at least in my family, we recommit to using our freedom to free others. And for fuck’s sake, if there’s ever been an important time for Jews to do this, it’s now.

So I’ve written y’all a Haggadah. (This is the book that guides the Seder.) This one skips a lot of parts. I’ve taken … liberties. I’ve replaced the preaching with poetry and prayers with improvised toasts. It is written for a mixed crowd of Jews and non Jews. The idea is that you go around the table and take turns reading. Each tulip marks a new person’s part. Chag sameach y’all.

PS: If you want to brush up on the Passover story or just get into the Passover spirit, the Rugrats Passover special is $2 to buy on Apple TV. It’s only 22 minutes and I can’t recommend it enough.

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"Now, in the presence of loved ones and friends, before us the emblems of freedom’s festival, we gather in sacred celebration to link past and future.”²

Every year, we tell ourselves the story of ourselves. May we define ourselves not by our slavery or our exodus or by our suffering, but rather by our commitment to understanding our freedom as a responsibility to those who are not free. We remind ourselves that our own redemption is inextricably bound with the deliverance of all people.

We are here today to renew our promise to use our freedom to free others. Because we know that as The Great Audre Lorde said,

"I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own."

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Passover is our story of deliverance to a land that once meant our freedom. In the name of that land, of that freedom, of our “nation,” our people are now massacring another people and that is the opposite of what Passover is about. It is the opposite of what Judaism is about.

Tonight we remind ourselves what Judaism is about, what we are about, and who we are. Tonight, together, we celebrate spring renewal by taking a moment to renew our vows, to re-define ourselves by our values.

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One minute of silence for the dead.

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Bearing Witness
BY GRAMMA CAROL

…is now lest we Pass Over
and forget,
forget each other even for a moment.
We have nothing more to give or get:
We have each other
to remind ourselves where we were.
We have each other.
God is just the name for all of that.

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Passover is also a celebration of the spring.

The Trees
BY PHILLIP LARKIN

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

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Lighting the Candles. Make a toast to light.

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The first cup. Tonight we celebrate freedom. Wine helps us feel free. Make a toast to wine.

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Dipping of the greens.

The greens symbolize spring, renewal, hope, and potential. It’s important to stay hopeful in order to continue to work toward the good of all people. Make a toast to greens.

Now we dip the greens in the salt water that symbolizes tears and suffering. The Good and hopeful and the sad and Bad. Everything together.

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Good Bones
BY MAGGIE SMITH

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

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Breaking of the middle matzah.

The breaking of bread is a symbol of friendship. We break matzah to remind ourselves when we are with our families that we are both family and friends. It is also a symbol of solidarity with the stranger and the lost, with the hungry and the unjustly imprisoned. Matzah is the bread of affliction, it tastes like cardboard, and we eat it to remind ourselves of suffering, as if we needed reminders. But it is very easy to make palatable if you put sweet things on it.

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The Thing Is
BY ELLEN BASS

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
 when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

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Whoever’s turn this is goes away and hides the other half of the middle matzah— the afikoman for everyone to look for later.

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The Telling of the Story

We’re going to skip the story but here are some highlights:

1. Exodus 22:21: "You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

2. Pharaoh, in order to turn the Egyptians against the Jews told them that they would replace them, that they would reproduce too much and take over. This is the ancient root of the stupid racist Great Replacement Theory conspiracy.

   

   from Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

3. When the Pharaoh told the midwives to kill all the male babies, they said “OK SURE” and then they didn’t do it because midwives have been radical bitches since the dawn of time.

4. When the Jewish people cheered at God’s plagues on the Egyptians, God said “Hey, not cool guys” and reminded us that we should never celebrate the suffering of our enemies even when it’s necessary for our own freedom. “Your triumph is diminished by the slaughter of the foe.”

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The Plagues

Now we say the plagues as we say each one we dip a finger in the wine and flick a drop of wine somewhere it won’t stain anything and we say the sacred word of the holy Jewish ritual of complaining: “FEH!” But really each drop is a prayer to end the suffering of all, even our enemies.

Blood, frogs, lice, flies, livestock pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness and the killing of firstborn children.

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The Four Questions

(Optional: sing along with this kid -2min.)

At this part of the seder, the youngest person at the table (or whoever drew 13) sings the four questions. These questions ask why we do what we do on Passover (Why on this night do we eat only matzah? Why on this night do we eat bitter herbs? Why on this night do we dip our food twice? Why on this night do we recline while eating?") Let’s take a second to say how great it is to teach children to ask questions—that they can and should ask, “Why?”

One thing that is cool about Jews is that the first rule of Judaism is “don’t believe anything we tell you.” The word “Israel” means “wrestles with God.” We question everything—even God and hold up learning as a holy act of gratitude. And that is cool because being curious makes people happy.

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"It’s your life — but only if you make it so. The standards by which you live must be your own standards, your own values, your own convictions in regard to what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is important and what is trivial. When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else or a community or a pressure group, you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being." —Eleanor Roosevelt

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The Four Children

This is the part of the seder where we review a few different kinds of kids and the best way to communicate the point of what we’re doing to each one. This reminds us to consider who a person is when we’re trying to bring them aboard any kind of social justice mission. We are taught to consider their capacities, feelings, and needs.

The wise child asks “what is the meaning of this seder to us.” The “wicked” child asks “what does all this mean to you?” —to you, not to us. We are taught to recognize that they do not feel like they are part of the community. And the instruction in the original books is to say “oh so if you’re not one of us then you would have been left behind and stayed a slave, ass hole” which is perhaps not that helpful because it’s kind of mean.

But there’s a kernel of something in it which is that you are reminding that person that our salvation lies in community and that in rejecting the community they reject their own salvation. Let’s remind ourselves that when people are being ass holes it’s often because they feel left out. The wise child and the wicked child ask essentially the same question but we have to notice their attitude and feelings to give them the best answer.

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Islands
BY MURIEL RUKHEYSER

O for God's sake they are connected underneath
They look at each other across the glittering sea some keep a low profile
Some are cliffs
The bathers think
islands are separate like them.

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Dayenu

(Optional: Singalong unhinged rendition.)

In this song we list the miracles God performed to free us from slavery and then to each we say, “Dayenu!” which means, “it would have been enough!” As in, if only he had done X and Y it would have been enough but, no! He did Z as well! So let’s go around and say our own blessings without which we already would have had enough and cheers to them.

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At the end of the story the Jews are free and that’s what we’re here to celebrate. That’s why on Passover, you wear comfortable clothes and you recline on pillows and you get drunk. Because another very important way to honor your freedom other than in commitment to the freedom to others is to have fun.

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Now we bless the bitter herbs and eat them to feel the sting of our ancestors’ tears and of those crying everywhere. We go around the table and say how we are complicit in the suffering of others from the comfort of our lives.

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Now we combine the charoset and the bitter herbs to symbolize, again, that good and bad always come together. Sweetness, joy, suffering, and bitterness are always a sandwich.

Adrift³
BY MARK NEPO

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

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EAT DINNER

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Everyone looks for the Afikoman. Everyone sends however much money they can to whoever finds it. And that person sends all the money to e-sims for Gaza.

1. That’s a literal instruction to treat immigrants well. And now Trump is instrumentalizing Jewish trauma to illegally deport immigrants.

2. From Mishkan HaSeder

3. Thank you Dora Prieto