Passover Resources for a “Very Different Night” ~ April 2020 / Nisan 5790

Dear Friends,

Whether you are keeping it small this year with your immediate family or housemates, Zooming with extended family across the country and world, or trying to figure out new ways to mark the holiday, this Passover will certainly feel different from those past.  I’m grateful—particularly within this time of upheaval—that Judaism provides us with this chance to reboot: to reflect on the nature of freedom, celebrate the community, connections and agency that we do have, and to take stock of the many blessings in our lives.

Below are resources to help you take advantage of this opportunity at a time when we’re all seeking to be together, while apart. Passover is a holiday that reflects this yearning for togetherness, for wholeness, for hope; it supports us in holding the paradoxes of life—oppression and redemption, bitterness and sweetness and so many more—with resilience and wisdom.  

With blessings for a Passover that offers sweetness, joy, meaning and reflection –

Zissen Pesah & Hag Sameah,

Rabbi Michelle Dardashti

***

Guides to hosting and creating virtual Seders, with great ideas for any Seder

• If you are hosting a Seder with extended family and friends remotely, this is a great how-to: https://www.heyalma.com/how-to-host-a-virtual-passover-seder/
• Here’s a short guide from Hillel International for hosting a “Zeder” (Zoom Seder).
• HERE is a pretty fabulous (and international) Haggadah in PowerPoint for use in Zoom Seders!
• HERE is fodder for planning solo or much smaller Seders this year.
• This site has all kinds of good Passover resources, from recipes to Haggadot, to virtual Seders that you can join: https://seder2020.org/
• If you are looking for a virtual Seder to join in on with people with whom you’re connected, check out the websites of local synagogues. I’m also happy to try be helpful if you reach out before the holiday; please feel free to email me at rabbi@brown.edu.
• Feel free to email me for my own abridged Haggadah/Seder guide, which can be edited/printed for personal use by you and anyone with whom you’re sharing Seder.

Online Haggadot & Seder Supplements

• “The Promise of the Land”

https://www.behrmanhouse.com/promise-of-the-land-4820

• Rabbi David Seidenberg

http://neohasid.org/zman/pesach/InnerSeder/ (or HERE for a shortened version)

• “The Velveteen Rabbi’s Haggadah for Pesach”

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat combines traditional Haggadah content with reflection and poetry.

https://velveteenrabbi.com/2015/02/03/velveteen-rabbis-haggadah-for-pesach/

• “The Hamilton Haggadah”

https://ritualwell.org/sites/default/files/Hamilton%20Haggadah.pdf 

If this is of interest, you might also enjoy THIS essay, just in from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

• Make your own Haggadah (or get ideas)

https://www.haggadot.com/ OR Maggid Cards: a fun way to tell the Passover story—cut these sections into cards and pass them out at your Seder (or pre-assign to those on Zoom with you).  You can play a game of putting them in order, and then each person can tell the story of their section in some creative way.

Bringing Social Justice discussions and symbols into your Seder (the last 4 are Covid specific)

• https://ajws-americanjewishwo.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/thefifthcup_2020_web.pdf
• https://www.hias.org/passover?utm_source=hias.org&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=passover2020&utm_content=haggadah_2
• https://jufj.org/assets/uploads/2020/04/2020-social-justice-seder-haggadah.pdf
• https://www.truah.org/resources/the-other-side-of-the-river-the-other-side-of-the-sea/
• Integrity First for America, regarding rising hate in this time of fear.
• Additional SJ themes and ways to volunteer virtually: https://werepair.org/passover/
• On Mass Incarceration in the Time of Covid-19
• T’ruah on the 4 Coronavirus Children Within Us

Some intellectual food for thought

Yehuda Kurtzer of the Shalom Hartman Institute North America interviews Michael Walzer, on democracy in this moment and how it relates to Passover. Click here. 

Preparing Your Home

Everyone celebrates and observes Passover differently.  Your practices may even be different from the rest of your family. If you are trying to not eat leavened foods (hametz) and the rest of your family is, have a talk with them about what you need.  Some people go all out and clean their houses and kitchens of all hametz before Passover, some simply stop eating bread; others clean out inboxes and tidy desktops. If you’d like to observe the practice of “SELLING” [closing up and not touching hametz during all of Passover] and searching for /disposing of hametz within space you’ll use during Pesah, please check out those links and lmk if have questions!

Preparing Your Heart

• Take advantage of these writing prompts by Merle Feld.
• https://www.jewishspirituality.org/get-started/resources-for-challenging-times/
• Donate money to Jews within your community, who are in need of food for Passover. This mitzvah of maot hittin can be accomplished by being in touch with a local rabbi. If you are unable to give locally, I recommend giving to Mazon, or Leket Yisrael.
• This piece, which I wrote a number of years back ;).
• Omer counters by Rabbis Simon Jacobson or Gavriel Goldfeder. More re the Omer HERE.