Show Yourself: Fulfilling the Legacy of the Passover Seder
Rabbi Michael Beals, Temple Beth El
Organizations like the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society (HIAS). The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC), National Council of Jewish Women, Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), and the Jewish Center for Justice are all nationwide Jewish efforts to demand a legislative fix to the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, ensuring a pathway to citizenship for the group known as DREAMers, those impacted by the Development relief and Education for Alien Minors act, who are American in all the ways that matter.
In the Passover Haggadah, we read “in every generation, a person is obligated to see themselves as though they came forth from Egypt.” Maimonides, the 12th century Jewish philosopher, encourages us to read it as “a person is obligated to show themselves as though they came forth from Egypt” (Hilchot Chametz U’Matzah 7:6). When we stand with DREAMers, with recipients of Temporary Protected Status, and with all immigrants in search of a better life, we honor our own history and fulfill the legacy of the Passover Seder.
4 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR YOUR SEDER TABLE
- What issues do current immigrants in your community face? How might you show yourself in your local area?
- In what ways can we show ourselves as if we were the ones liberated from Egypt? What contemporary issues come to mind when we think about the need to show ourselves?
- What is your family’s personal immigration story?
- What is the significance of the change from “seeing” to “showing,” from internal to external, in these texts?
Passover Seder Refugee Supplement Prayer and Poem
by Rabbi Daniel Gropper, Community Synagogue of Rye, NY Religious Action of Reform Judaism Center
Include this reading during Yahatz (יחץ—breaking of the middle matzah, before or after the poem—this is the bread of affliction).
Meditation: If there is a moment in the Seder that should leave us feeling self-conscious, it is now. This year we are slaves, next year the liberated ones. This year we are slaves, next year the liberated ones? Aren’t we, who sit around these tables overflowing with food and drink, the liberated ones, while many of the 60 million people displaced worldwide, torn from their homes due to civil war, famine, or persecution are truly the bent, the ones in need?
Prayer: Eloheinu V’Elohei Avoteinu v’Imoteinu: Our God and God of our fathers and mothers, help those who flee persecution as our ancestors did some 3000 years ago. Show chesed (loving-kindness), compassion to those hemmed in by misery and captivity, to those who take to the open ocean, or treacherous landscape seeking freedom and liberty. Rescue and recover them—delivering them from gorge to meadow, from darkness to light. Inspire us to act on behalf of those we don’t know, on behalf of those we may never meet because we know the heart of the stranger. We too ate the bread of affliction whose taste still lingers. And so, dear God, inspire us to be rodfei tzedek, pursuers of righteousness, for those who seek the same freedoms we enjoy tonight. Do it speedily and in our days, and let us all say, Amen.
