Dear Congregation Beth Israel members and friends,

During the Passover seder, we name the ten plagues listed in Torah, and remove a droplet of wine or juice from our glasses as we recite each one. The tenth one is “death of the firstborn,” and Torah tells us that before that happened, our ancestors were instructed to kill a lamb and paint the doorposts with blood so that the angel of death would “pass over” our houses, leading to the name of the festival Passover. (The wordplay works in Hebrew too.)

I was surprised to learn this year, as I was studying commentary on that passage, that many of our commentators presume the blood was painted not on the outside of the door – which is what I had always imagined – but on the inside. It’s as though the marker on the door were to remind us of something about ourselves and our relationship to the world, something so important that we need to remember it together every year as we enter into Passover.

Maybe that message is: in celebrating Passover, we retell ourselves into the core story of the Jewish people. Torah tells us to eat bitter herbs and unleavened bread with our walking sticks in our hands and our sandals on our feet, ready to journey. Thankfully most of us have never had to flee our homes, taking only what we could carry. Most of us have never known the kind of oppression the seder story describes. But it’s still part of how we understand ourselves as Jews.

Maybe that message is: everything in our lives has a lesson to teach us. The bitter herbs that represent our suffering in Mitzrayim remind us that we can grow even in sorrow. The sweet paste of haroset reminds us to build structures in our lives that can sustain us even in difficult times. The flatbread we call matzah is both “the bread of our affliction” and our spiritual road rations, the humble waybread of the lifelong journey from constriction to freedom.

Maybe that message is: our ancestors left Egypt as a mixed multitude, and it was always meant to be that way. Our families are a mixed multitude: many of us have beloveds, spouses, parents, children, and friends who are Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or something else. Our congregation is a mixed multitude: some of us grew up here, some of us grew up far away. Some of us grew up Jewish, some of us didn’t. Some of us grew up Orthodox, some Reform.

Around each seder table is a mixed multitude. I keep thinking back to an illustration I showed during my Rosh Hashanah sermon, showing a family around the Rosh Hashanah table: one wearing a yellow “bring the hostages home” ribbon, another wearing a keffiyeh as a scarf. I believe with all my heart that we all want what’s best for the Jewish people and for humanity at large, even when we disagree about how to get there or what it might look like when we do.

The traditional haggadah mentions four types of children: one wise, one “wicked,” one simple, and one who doesn’t know what to ask. I like to see these as human archetypes, and I see each of them in each of us. All of us are wise. All of us can be defensive and unkind (that’s what I see in the “wicked” child’s challenge of, “what does all this mean to you”). All of us can approach life with a beginner’s mind. And all of us sometimes don’t know what to say or what to ask each other.

I believe that when we cultivate empathy and compassion we can heighten our collective wisdom; remove the sting from our questioning; appreciate the deep meaning in simplicity; and help each other ask (and answer) life’s big questions. Our sages teach that if there is no one to ask the four questions, the seder leader can ask the questions of themself. What matters is that we’re asking the big questions about who we are as a community – and who we want to be.

Passover is my favorite holiday, and has been since I was a child. In my family of origin it was exactly the same every year, and I loved that predictability. I loved the experience of a dinner party with storytelling and songs built in. I loved being able to stay up late, hunt for the afikoman, sing every song and hymn with gusto just like my older siblings and cousins did. As I grew older, I loved the experience of being with family and feeling connected with generations before me.

I hope you’ll join our Second Night Community Seder at CBI this year. Many of the words and songs we’ll encounter will be traditional and familiar, unchanging from year to year. (That’s part of what I love about any religious ritual: the words stay the same, even as we keep changing and growing.) We’ll enlist kids and kids-at-heart to act out the story of the Exodus. And there will be a few new poems and readings arising out of what’s on our minds and hearts now.

The meal will be catered by our own Jen Burt (I’m already looking forward to her homemade gefilte fish and matzah ball soup!), so please RSVP by TODAY (Monday, April 7) so we know how much food to prepare. As always, if the cost is a hardship let me know. Especially at this season when we proclaim “let all who are hungry come and eat,” I want to make sure that everyone who wants to be in community for seder can join us as we once again tell the story of who we are.

Blessings to all for a sweet and meaningful Passover,

— Rabbi Rachel