Category Archives: Bible

A Seder Supplement for Passover 5778: “The 10 Sacred Acts of Liberation”

parting_waters

Here’s the introduction to my new Passover seder supplement, designed to be used alongside or instead of the 10 Plagues section. Click here for the entire text to print out and read at your seder table this year. (Click here, here, here and here for supplements I’ve written in previous years.)

In the traditional seder, we are instructed to take one drop of wine for our cups to “reduce our joy” over the pain God inflicted upon the Egyptian people through the 10 plagues. Tonight, we choose to increase our joy by taking a sip of wine as we acknowledge 10 sacred acts of liberation we learn from the Exodus story. May we heed these lessons in every generation!

Songs at the Sea

waters

Based on Exodus 15:1-18

As the waters parted before them
they sang their songs of praise:

Some sang to the one who
shattered Pharaoh’s army
with a mighty right hand,
some sang to the god of their ancestors
who remained faithful to them
and them alone.

Others sang to the one
who redeems the oppressed
so that the world may know of his might:
who is like you god of war,
consuming the enemy like straw
incinerated with one awesome
mighty blast from on high?

Some sang a hymn of praise
to the god of vengeance
who shamed the Egyptians
hurling them all like stones
into the heart of the churning sea;

while still others sang out with hope
that the peoples of the land
would now melt away
as god’s people went forth
to dispossess them.

As they marched on, their voices joined
into one feverish song;
a tuneless wordless howl
echoing on through the depths,
yet too laden with fear to rise
to the source of their liberation.