From Rabbi Arthur Waskow:
Subject: 4 More Questions for the Seder
Dear Chevra,
For a couple of years after Rosh Hashanah 1993, I had hoped we would no longer
need to ask these additional questions at the Seder table. Sadly, we see that
we still must.
May the confluence in one week this year of Eid al Idha (commemorating the
Binding of Ismail), Pesach, and Easter remind us how our different stories
overlap, how what divides us could also be the many-eyed vision that gives us
deeper perspective on God and truth and freedom.
--- Shalom v'salaam, Arthur
FOUR MORE QUESTIONS
A Passage to be Read in the Passover Haggadah:
(Perhaps After the Tale of the Five Rabbis in B'nei B'raq)
Let us therefore tonight expand upon the story of our deliverance from slavery
by asking:
Why is this Pesach night different from every other Pesach night?
Because on every Pesach night -- tonight as well --
We call out to another people, "Let our people go!"
But tonight we also hear another people
Calling out to us: "Let our people go!"
Tonight the children of Hagar through Ishmael
and the children of Sarah through Isaac
call out to each other:
We too are children of Abraham!
We are cousins, you and we!
As Isaac and Ishmael once met at Be'er LaChai Ro-i,
the Well of the Living One Who Sees,
So it is time for us to meet --
Time for us to see each other, face to face.
Time for us to make peace with each other.
They met for the sake of their dead father, Abraham;
We must meet for the sake of our dead children --
Dead at each others' hands.
For the sake of our children's children,
So that they not learn to kill.
And so tonight we must ask ourselves four new questions:
(1) Why does the Torah teach: "When a stranger lives-as-a-stranger with you
in your land, you shall not oppress him. The stranger who lives-as-a-stranger
[hager hagar] with you shall be as one of your citizens; you shall love her as
yourself."
Because Hagar Mamitzria [Hagar the Egyptian] was a stranger in your midst, and
"because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt."
(2) Why do we break the matzah in two?
Because the bread of affliction becomes the bread of freedom --when we share
it. Because the Land that gives bread to two peoples must be divided in two,
so that both peoples may eat of it. So long as one people grasps the whole
land, it is a land of affliction. When each people can eat from part of the
Land, it will become a land of freedom.
(3) Why do we dip herbs twice, once in salt water and once in sweet charoset?
First for the tears of two peoples, Israeli and Palestinian; then for the
sweetness of two peoples, Palestinian and Israeli; for the future of both
peoples, who must learn not to repeat the sorrows of the past but to create
the joys of the future.
(4) Why is there an egg upon the Pesach plate?
It is the egg of birthing. When we went forth from Mitzrayim, the Narrow
Place, it was the birthtime of our people, the People of Israel; and today we
are witnessing the birth of freedom for another people, the People of
Palestine.
When the midwives Shifrah and Puah
Saved the children that Pharaoh ordered them to kill,
That was the beginning of the birth-time;
When Pharaoh's daughter joined with Miriam
To give a second birth to Moses from the waters,
She birthed herself anew into God's daughter, Bat-yah,
And our people turned to draw ourself toward life.
When God became our Midwife
And named us Her firstborn,
Though we were the smallest and youngest of the peoples,
The birthing began;
When the waters of the Red Sea broke,
We were delivered.
So tonight it is our task to help the Midwife
Who tonight is giving birth to a new people --
And so to give a new birth to ourselves.
This effort was initiated by The Shalom Center,
a division of ALEPH: Alliance
for Jewish Renewal,
7318 Germantown Ave.,
Philadelphia, PA 19119.
Phone:
215/247-9700.
E-mail: ALEPH
Rabbi Arthur Waskow is the author of Godwrestling - Round 2 (Jewish Lights
Publishing, Woodstock VT) and many other works of Jewish renewal. He is a
Pathfinder of
ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, an international network
with headquarters in Philadelphia. You can write to
Rabbi Waskow
