Download the free “Haggadah of the Inner Seder” (18 pp.). PDF, RTF, and DOC versions, along with a brief guide to the haggadah’s features, can be found at: http://neohasid.org/zman/pesach/InnerSeder/.
You can also go to neohasid.org for Omer Counter apps, and for information about David Seidenberg’s new book, Kabbalah and Ecology: God’s Image in the More-Than-Human World, published by Cambridge University Press.

• Help the environment by reducing waste as you empty your home of chametz (leavened foods such as breads, pastas, etc).  Give leftover bread and grain-based items to area food pantries rather than throwing them out.
• Clean your house using environmentally friendly cleaning products. Consider brands such as Trader Joe’s or Seventh Generation. Or make your own cleaning product by combining water, lemon juice and a splash of vinegar.
• As much as possible, buy your Passover fruits and vegetables from local, organic sources. This reduces your carbon footprint as you will not be purchasing produce flown in from hundreds of miles away. Cook with vegetables that are in season.
• Use soy or beeswax candles for your Passover table.  These create less soot and are more sustainable than paraffin candles.
•  Avoid disposable plates and utensils.  If your level of observance requires using separate dinnerware during Passover, invest in purchasing separate dishes that you can use over again each year.  Don’t clog landfills by using plates, cups and cutlery that get thrown away after a single use.
• Use washable napkins and a washable table cloth for your Seders. This is another way to reduce waste.
• If travelling for Passover, consider carpooling with others and travelling at off-peak times to avoid wasting gas.
• Incorporate environmental themes as part of your Seder.  Find one example at    http://www.rac.org/sites/default/files/freedom%20seder%20.pdf

(Freedom Seder for the Earth)

Have a joyous and green Passover!

We — Rabbis, Cantors, and other Jewish spiritual leaders —
call upon Jewish households, congregations, seminaries,
communal and denominational bodies, and other institutions:
Move Our Money to Protect Our Planet.

In the ancient tradition from Sinai, naaseh v’nishma: Let us act, and as we do let us listen and learn.

Let us act:

To Move Our Money and Protect Our Planet, we call on the Jewish community to:

• Move Our Money (household and congregational) away from purchasing oil and coal-based energy and moving instead, wherever possible, to buy energy from wind and solar sources.
• Move Our Money (household and congregational) away from savings and checking accounts in banks that are investing our money in Big Carbon, moving it instead to community banks and credit unions;
• Move Our Money (household, congregational, communal, and denominational) away from actual investments in the stocks and bonds of death-dealing Big Oil, Big Coal, and Big Unnatural Gas, and move it instead to investments in stable, profitable solar and wind-energy companies and in community-based enterprises that help those who suffer from asthma and other diseases caused by Big Carbon;
• Organize our congregants and members to insist that local and state governments similarly Move Our Money – often in large pension funds — from investments in death to investments in life.
• Insist that Congress Move Our Money — money we pay in taxes — away from subsidies to Big Oil, Big Coal, and Big Unnatural Gas, and instead to supporting research, development, and production of life-giving renewable energy.
  

Let us learn:

We are a world people who still bear the wisdom of indigenous farmers and shepherds, meditators and sages, cooks and city planners:

• Our festivals dance with the rhythms of Earth, Moon, and Sun;
• Our Shabbat points the way toward a sustainable rhythm of work and rest;
• Our kashrut points the way toward sacred limits and practices in consuming not only food but other gifts of Mother Earth;
• Our long long history of resistance to the pharaohs that oppress human beings, lift up idols to worship, and bring plagues upon the Earth gives us a reservoir of commitment and clarity in political action.
  

And when as a world/indigenous people we join words and foods in the Pesach Seder, we find twin powerful passages of the Haggadah:

In every generation, some new versions of “pharaoh” arise to endanger us.
In every generation, we ourselves must act to win our freedom from destruction.

In our generation, these Pharaohs are global corporations of Big Carbon that are bringing the Plagues of climate crisis upon all life-forms on Planet Earth — a crisis of a breadth and depth unprecedented in the history of the human species.

And in our generation, we can resist these new pharaohs by moving our money to places where it will serve life and heal our wounded Earth.

Moving from what is deadly to what is life-giving echoes the deepest transformation of our history: In the very process of freeing ourselves from Pharaoh, we learned to shape a new kind of society — Beyond the Red Sea, we moved to Shabbat and Sinai.

Half a century ago, the American Jewish community joined with other religious communities to challenge racism, and together we were crucial in taking a great step toward healing America. Today the Holy One and the Earth need us again to join with other religious, spiritual, and ethical communities to make ourselves a crucial part of the movement to heal our planetary climate.

As Rabbi Akiba taught, facing the dangerous Caesars of his day: “Which is greater, study or action? Study, if it leads to action.” (Kiddushin 40b)

So we — Rabbis, Cantors, other Jewish spiritual leaders, and students in these sacred callings — not only join in this Call but also undertake a campaign to bring this life-giving vision of Torah into the hills and rivers, streets and forests, newspapers and videos, homes and campuses, neighborhoods and synagogues, of our generation.

By April 30, 2014, more than 70 Rabbis and other Jewish spiritual leaders have signed this Call.
The Initiating Signers are below; to see the full list of signers, please click to
<https://theshalomcenter.org/content/rabbinic-call-move-our-money-protect-our-planet >

Now we appeal to all members of the Jewish community to join in this effort. To do so, please click to:
<https://theshalomcenter.org/civicrm/petition/sign?sid=11&reset=1>

Initiating Signers:

Rabbi Katy Allen
Rabbi Phyllis Berman
Spiritual Dir Barbara Breitman
Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin
Rabbi Howard Cohen

Rabbi Elliot Dorff
Rabbi Nancy Flam
Rabbi Everett Gendler
Rabbi Marc Gopin
Rabbi Arthur Green
Rabbi Lori Klein
Rabbi Michael Lerner
Rabbi Mordechai Liebling
Rabbi Jan Salzman
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
Kohenet Holly Taya Shere
Rabbi Sidney Schwarz
Rabbi David Shneyer
Rabbi Ariana Silverman
Rabbi Ed Stafman
Rabbi Margot Stein
Rabbi Susan Talve
Rabbi Lawrence Troster
Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg
Cantor Greg Yaroslow
Rabbi Shawn Zevit

___ Please add my name as a signer of this Call:
Sign online at <https://theshalomcenter.org/civicrm/petition/sign?sid=11&reset=1>

With the Counting of the Omer count seven weeks of seven days – 49 days – from crossing into freedom to receiving the Torah, from redemption to revelation, from Passover to Shavuot, from the Sea of Reeds to the Mountain of Sinai, from the depths of despair to the heights of joy, from physical enslavement to spiritual freedom, from the barley harvest offering to the wheat harvest offering, from the food of animals offering to the food of humans offering. We count 49 days.

In Jewish mystical tradition, each of these seven weeks is equated to one of seven Divine Attributes. During each week, we also travel through these seven attributes day by day. In this way, each day represents a combination of two attributes, and throughout the 49 days we experience every possible combination of the attributes, 49 different combinations, so very many ways of considering the sacred, and our connection to it.

This year, seven of the writers of Ma'yan Tikvah's Earth Etudes for Elul have each agreed to write seven Omer reflections for Ma'yan Tikvah. We are grateful for the immense thought and effort that each of these writers has put into their work. As always, they have woven some aspect of the natural world into their writings. And also, as always, you will see great variety from week to week – we begin with hard-hitting science, and then the week after switch to poetry. You will read political views, thoughts on personal growth, ideas on how to get closer to the Earth and closer to G!d, as each of the writers expresses her or his innermost feelings and pulls you into her or his personal world. I invite you to journey with us, and to see where our writers' reflections will lead us.

The first week of Omer reflections begin on Tuesday evening, April 15. They have been written by Rabbi Judy Weiss, and in addition to the Divine Attribute of Chesed, which is the focus of the week, she also focuses on the oceans and climate change. Rabbi Judy Weiss lives in Brookline, MA, with her husband Alan. She teaches Tanakh, and volunteers with Citizens’ Climate Lobby.

Passover is almost here. We are counting the days.

I wish you a joyous sense of leaving behind all that binds you and an entrance into an expansive sense of freedom.

Chag Sameach!

Rabbi Katy Z. Allen, Ma'yan Tikvah – A Wellspring of Hope

www.mayantikvah.org

]]> https://beta.jewcology.com/2014/04/preparing-to-count-the-omer/feed/ 0 https://beta.jewcology.com/2014/04/the-seder-s-innermost-secret-charoset-earth-eros-in-the-passover-celebration/ https://beta.jewcology.com/2014/04/the-seder-s-innermost-secret-charoset-earth-eros-in-the-passover-celebration/#comments Tue, 08 Apr 2014 12:32:26 +0000 http://jewcology.org/2014/04/the-seder-s-innermost-secret-charoset-earth-eros-in-the-passover-celebration/ There it sits on the Seder plate: charoset, a delicious paste of chopped nuts, chopped fruits, spices, and wine.

So the question would seem obvious: "Why is there charoset on the Seder plate?"

That's the most secret Question at the Seder – so secret nobody even asks it. And it’s got the most secret answer: none.

The Haggadah explains about matzah, the bread so dry it blocks your insides for a week.

The Haggadah explains about the horse-radish so bitter it blows the lid off your lungs and makes breathing so painful you wish you could just stop.

The Haggadah even explains about that scrawny chicken neck, or maybe the roasted beet, masquerading as a whole roast lamb.

But it never explains charoset.

Yes, there's an oral tradition. (Fitting for something that tastes so delicious!) You've probably heard somebody at a Passover Seder claim that charoset is the mortar the ancient Israelite slaves had to paste between the bricks and stones of those giant warehouses they were building for Pharaoh.

But that's a cover story. Really dumb. You think that mortar was so sweet, so spicy, so delicious that every ancient Israelite just had to slaver some mortar on his tongue?

You think it wasn't leeks and onions they wailed for after they crossed the Sea of Blood, but the mortar they were pasting on their masters' mansions? You think they were whining, "Give me mortar or give me death?"

Forbid it, Almighty God!

OK, maybe it’s a midrash? Those bitter-hearted rabbis, always fresh from some pogrom or exile, claiming that to the Israelites, slavery was sweet? So sweet that it reminds us that slavery may taste sweet, and this is itself a deeper kind of slavery?

No. The oral tradition transmitted by charoset is not by word of mouth but taste of mouth. A kiss of mouth. A full-bodied, full-tongued, "kisses sweeter than wine" taste of mouth.

Charoset is an embodiment of by far the earthiest, sexiest, kissyest, bodyest book of the Hebrew Bible —- the Song of Songs. Charoset is literally a full-bodied taste of the Song. The Song is the recipe for charoset.

You think they were going to tell you that when you were six years old, just learning how to stumble through "Mah nishtanah," the Four Questions? Or maybe when you were fourteen, just beginning to eye that good-looking cousin sitting right across the table?

Or maybe when you were 34 and they were all nagging you to settle down already, get married –– that's when you thought they might finally tell the truth about charoset?

Face it: They were never going to tell you.

Maybe, without ever asking or answering about charoset, they might mention something that seemed entirely different: that the olden rabbis thought the Song of Songs should be recited during the festival of Passover, but quickly they'd explain that what seems so erotic in the Song was really about God's loving effort to free the Israelites from Pharaoh.

And – especially important in our generation:

The Song is by far the likeliest candidate of all Biblical books to have been written, or collated, or edited, by a woman. A woman’s experience is central to it.

AND – it is filled with love not only between human beings but between human beings and the Earth. The luscious tastes of fruit, nuts, spices, wine – are the delicious savors and flavors of the Earth.

Time to tell the passionate truth: The Song of Songs is the recipe for charoset, and charoset is the delicious embodiment of the Song.

Verses from the Song:

"Then I went down to the walnut grove."

There are several kinds of freedom that we celebrate on Pesach:

The freedom of people who rise up against Pharaoh, the tyrant.

The freedom of Earth, the flowers that rise up against winter.

The freedom of birth, of the lambs who trip and stagger in their skipping-over, passing-over dance called “pesach.”

The freedom of sex, that rises up against the prunish and the prudish.

The text of the Song subtly, almost secretly, bears the recipe for charoset, and we might well see the absence of any specific written explanation of charoset as itself a subtle, secret pointer toward the "other" liberation of Pesach –- the erotic, Earth-loving freedom celebrated in the Song of Songs, which we are taught to read on Passover.

The Song of Songs is sacred not only to Jews, but also to Christians and to Muslims, and especially to the mystics in all three traditions. Its earth-and-human-loving erotic energy has swept away poets and rabbis, lovers and priests, dervishes and gardeners.

Yet this sacred power — "Love is strong as death," sings the Song — has frightened many generations into limiting its power. Redefining its flow as a highly structured allegory, or hiding it from the young, or forbidding it from being sung in public places.

Even so, long tradition holds that on the Shabbat in the middle of Passover, Jews chant the Song of Songs.

Why is this time of year set aside for this extraordinary love poem? At one level, because it celebrates the springtime rebirth of life.

And the parallel goes far deeper. For the Song celebrates a new way of living in the world.

The way of love between the earth and her human earthlings, beyond the future of conflict between them that accompanies the end of Eden.

The way of love between women and men, with women celebrated as leaders and initiators, beyond the future of subjugation that accompanies the end of Eden.

The way of bodies and sexuality celebrated, beyond the future of shame and guilt that accompanies the end of Eden.

The way of God so fully present in the whole of life that God needs no specific naming (for in the Song, God's name is never mentioned).

The way of adulthood, where there is no Parent and there are no children. No one is giving orders, and no one obeys them. Rather there are grownups, lovers — unlike the domination and submission that accompany the end of Eden.

In short, Eden for grown-ups. For a grown-up human race.

Whereas the original Garden was childhood, bliss that was unconscious, unaware, the Garden of the Song is maturity. Death is known, conflict is recognized (as when the heroine's brothers beat her up), yet joy sustains all.

So the "recipe" points us toward apples, quinces, raisins, apricots, figs, nuts, wine. Within the framework of the free fruitfulness of the earth, the "recipe" is free-form: no measures, no teaspoons, no amounts. Not even a requirement for apples rather than apricots, cinnamon rather than cloves, figs rather than dates. So there is an enormous breadth for the tastes that appeal to Jews from Spain, Poland, Iraq, India, America.

Nevertheless, I will offer a recipe.

Take a pound of raw shelled almonds, two pounds of organic raisins, and a bottle of red wine. On the side have organic apricots, chopped apples, figs, and dates (no pits), and small bottles of powdered cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

Assemble either an electric blender, or your great-grandmom's cast-iron hand-wound gefulte-fish chopper brought from the Old Country. If it's the blender, put it on "chop" rather than "paste" frequency.

Start feeding the almonds and raisins into the blender or mixer, in judicious mixture. (How do you know "judicious"? Whatever doesn’t get the whole thing stuck so it won't keep grinding.) Whenever you feel like it, pour in some wine to lubricate the action. Stop the action every once in a while to poke around and stir up the ingredients.

Freely choose when to add apricots, apples, figs, and/or dates. Taste every ten minutes or so. If you start feeling giddy, good! — that's the idea.

Add in the spices. Clove is powerful, sweet and subtly sharp at the same time; a lot will get you just on the edge of High.

Keep stirring, keep chopping, keep dribbling wine — not till the charoset turns to paste but till there are still nubs of nuts, grains of raisin, suddenly a dollop of apricot spurting on your tongue.

You say this doesn't seem like a recipe, too free? Ahhh — as the Song itself says again and again, "Do not stir up love until it pleases. Do not rouse the lovers till they're willing."

Serve at the Pesach Seder, and also on the night when you first make love to a delicious partner. And on every wedding anniversary. And on the day when you and your friends decide to Move Our Money/Protect Our Planet – because the planet is not abstract and theoretical, but what we celebrate when we take charoset on our tongues.

Blessings of body and love, of creative mind and spirit!

But at the same time, many continue eating other foods that, by Torah standards, are hardly ideal.

On Passover, Jews are prohibited from eating, owning, or otherwise benefiting from chometz, foods such as breads, cakes, and cereals, that are made from one of the five grains (wheat, barley, rye, spelt, and oats) that ferment from contact with liquid. These prohibitions are based on several Torah verses and are observed with great care by religious Jews.

Many Jews spend weeks before Passover cleaning their houses, cars, and other possessions to make sure that not even a crumb of chometz will remain during the holiday. Moreover, many Ashkenazi Jews accept the additional stringency of abstaining from eating kitniyot, a category of grains and legumes, including rice, corn, lentils and beans.

So important are the chometz prohibitions that, while a common greeting on other Jewish festivals is “chag sumach” (may you have a joyous holiday), on Passover it is often “”chag kasher v’sameach” (may you have a kosher and joyous holiday).

I believe that Jews should be highly commended for the great dedication to Jewish commandments and traditions shown by their adherence to chometz prohibitions. But I would like to suggest that they could be even more consistent with Jewish values and teachings by giving up foods that Jews eat on Passover (and at other times), including meat, fish, dairy products and eggs.

Please consider:

1. Judaism mandates that people should be very careful about preserving their health and their lives. But numerous scientific studies have linked animal-based diets directly to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, many forms of cancer, and other chronic, degenerative diseases.

2. Judaism forbids tsa’ar ba’alei chayim, the inflicting of unnecessary pain on animals. Yet most farm animals — including those raised for kosher consumers — are raised on factory farms where they live in cramped, confined spaces, and are often drugged, mutilated, and denied fresh air, sunlight, exercise, and any enjoyment of life. That’s all before they are transported, often under abominable conditions, to slaughterhouses and violently and cruelly killed.

3. Judaism teaches that “the earth is the Lord’s” (Psalm 24:1) and that we are to be God’s partners and co-workers in preserving the world. In contrast, modern intensive livestock agriculture contributes substantially to climate change, soil erosion and depletion, air and water pollution, overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the destruction of tropical rain forests and other habitats, species extinction, and other environmental damage.

4. Judaism mandates bal tashchit, that we are not to waste or unnecessarily destroy anything of value, and that we are not to use more than is needed to accomplish a purpose. But animal agriculture requires the wasteful use of grain, land, water, energy, and other resources. For example, it takes up to 20 times as much land, 14 times as much water, and 10 times as much energy to feed a person on an animal-based diet than to feed a person on a plant-based diet.

5. Judaism stresses that we are to assist the poor and share our bread with hungry people. Yet more than 70% of the grain grown in the United States is fed to farmed animals, while an estimated 20 million people worldwide die due to hunger and its effects each year.

One could say “dayenu” (it would be enough) after any of the points above, because each one constitutes by itself a serious conflict between Jewish values and current practice. Thankfully, more and more Jews are shifting to a plant-based diet, recognizing that the Jewish case for vegetarianism and veganism is quite compelling.

After all, if God is concerned about us getting rid of every speck of chometz that we can, He surely must want our diets to avoid harming our health, inflicting suffering and violence on animals, damaging the environment, and depleting our natural resources. It is time to apply Judaism’s important teachings to our diets, demonstrating the relevance of Judaism’s eternal teachings to current issues, and helping move our precious, but imperiled, planet onto a sustainable path.

Since Passover is the holiday of freedom, it presents a wonderful opportunity to free ourselves from harmful eating habits and to shift to ones that are beneficial for our health and for our souls.

By Richard H. Schwartz

In view of the many current environmental crises that face the world today, this is a good time to consider environmental messages related to Passover and the events and concepts related to the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt:

1. Today's environmental threats can be compared in many ways to the Biblical ten plagues:

* When we consider the threats to our land, water, and air, we can easily enumerate ten modern "plagues". For example: (1) global warming (2) rapid melting of glaciers and polar ice caps (3) destruction of tropical rain forests (4) acid rain (5) soil erosion and depletion (6) loss of biodiversity (7) water pollution (8) air pollution (9) an increase in the number and severity of storms and floods (10) increased use of pesticides, chemical fertilizer, and other toxic chemicals.

* The Egyptians were subjected to one plague at a time, but the modern plagues are threatening us simultaneously.
* The Jews in Goshen were spared the Biblical plagues, but every person on earth is imperiled by the modern plagues.
* Instead of an ancient Pharaoh's heart being hardened, our hearts today have been hardened by the greed, materialism, and waste that are at the root of current environmental threats.
* God provided the Biblical plagues to free the Israelites, while today we must apply God's teachings in order to save ourselves and our precious but endangered planet.

2. The Passover Seder is a time for questions, including the traditional "four questions." Additional questions can be asked related to modern environmental threats. For example: Why is this period different than all other periods? (At all other periods only local regions faced environmental threats; today, the entire world is threatened.) Why isn’t there more activism in the Jewish community (and other communities) about current environmental threats? Why aren't Jewish values applied toward the alleviation of environmental problems?

3. Rabbi Jay Marcus, rabbi emeritus of the Young Israel of Staten Island, saw a connection between simpler diets and helping hungry people. He commented on the fact that "karpas" (eating of greens) comes immediately before "yahatz" (the breaking of the middle matzah for later use as the "afikomen" (desert) in the Seder service. He concluded that those who live on simpler foods (greens, for example) would more readily divide their possessions and share with others. The consumption of animal-centered diets involves the feeding of 70% of the grain grown in the United States to animals destined for slaughter and the importing of beef from other countries, while 20 million of the world's people die of hunger and its effects. This simpler diet would also have positive environmental effects since modern intensive livestock agriculture uses vast amounts of water, fuel, chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and other resources, and contributes to the destruction of habitats and many other environmental problems.

4. A popular song at the Seder is "dayenu" (it would have been enough). The message of this song would be very useful today when so many people seek to constantly increase their wealth and amass more possessions, with little thought of the negative environmental consequences.

5. An ancient Jewish legend indicates that Job's severe punishment occurred because when he was an advisor to Pharaoh he refused to take a stand when Pharaoh asked him what should be done with regard to the Israelites. This story can be discussed as a reminder that if we remain neutral and do not get involved in working for a better environment, severe consequences may follow.

6. According to Jewish tradition, Moses, Judaism's greatest leader, teacher, and prophet, was chosen to lead the Israelites out of Egypt because as a shepherd he showed great compassion to a lamb (Exodus Rabbah 2:2). Today, about 65 billion animals are raised annually for slaughter, mainly on factory farms under very cruel conditions, and raising food and providing water for these animals and getting rid of their wastes cause many environmental problems. Animal-based agriculture contributes significantly to climate change, deforestation, soil erosion, loss of biological diversity, and other environmental threats. Hence a shift toward vegan diets would help move our imperiled planet to a sustainable path.

In view of the above points, Passover would be a wonderful time to increasingly apply Jewish values in response to the many current environmental threats to humanity, in efforts to move our imperiled planet onto a sustainable path. ————————————————————————

A few nights ago my wife and I watched a really intense episode of Law and Order SVU which focused on a disturbed couple who abused young children and used them as indentured farm laborers. My wife, who is a doctoral student in food policy at Rutgers University then emailed me the following link about a topic we have discussed several times over the past few years: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/09/137623954/the-troubled-history-of-the-supermarket-tomato. This book reveals disturbing details related to conditions in which farm workers often operate, something many who live in Florida have been hearing about for years. In the NPR article referenced above, the author states that "there's an even darker side to the modern commercial tomato…up until recently, workers on many of Florida's vast industrial tomato farms were basically slaves…People being bought and sold like animals…people being shackled in chains. People being beaten for either not working hard enough, fast enough, or being too weak or sick to work. People actually being shot and killed for trying to escape. That sounds like 1850's slavery to me, and that, in fact, is going on, or has gone on." Although the above story is an extreme example of when farm workers are mistreated and taken advantage of, abuse of workers is certainly not rare (http://www.alternet.org/food/outsourcing-abuse-how-farm-workers-are-being-cheated-out-their-hard-earned-money).

The following is a really great blog entry on the topic of farm slavery in America: http://blog.thegreenplate.org/2011/02/beware-far-slavery/. I know at many Passover seders I attended in the past we bring up those individuals who are currently enslaved throughout the world, however, we often forget to recognize the slavery-like conditions that might be occurring in our own back yards. This occurs when as a society we turn a blind eye and allow the most vulnerable to be preyed upon. As Jews, and especially during this time of Pesach, we should feel a strong connection to this issue and make sure our voices are heard. There are many important environmental and health issues related to the manner in which we grow and distribute our food. Equally important, however, are the workers and their families and making sure they are protected and being treated with dignity.

This Passover my family will be joining the new custom of placing a tomatoe on our seder plate in order to recognize the plight of so many farm workers, facing harsh conditions in order to provide for their families (http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/tomato-seder-plate-article-1.1296337). I welcome you to join me and during the seder to discuss ways in which we can have an impact on this issue, especially at a time when immigration reform is a hot topic and the minds of most politicians. I also encourage you to go to the Fair Food Program Website and find more ways to get involved: http://fairfoodstandards.org/about.html.

Yesterday (March 21, 2013), along with 14 other religious folk, clergy and committed “laity,” I was arrested for standing at the White House with Bitter Herb and Matzah, signs and songs, reciting the names of more than 100 people who had been killed by one result of the climate crisis: Superstorm Sandy.

The action was organized by Interfaith Moral Action on Climate, of which The Shalom Center is a vigorously active member. We were calling on the president to act swiftly to heal our Mother Earth from the climate crisis, from the plagues that modern Pharaohs — Big Oil, Big Coal, Unnatural Gas — have brought upon us.

Among those arrested alongside me were Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, who teaches on social justice at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and is a member of The Shalom Center’s Board; Lynne Iser, a member of the Board of Isabella Freedman retreat center; and Freyda Black, a cantor, farmer and member of P’nai Or Fellowship in Philadelphia.

In a circle of 70 people in the midst of Pennsylvania Avenue, we had just completed a religious service. Rabbi David Shneyer had blown the shofar of warning and liberation. We had heard the Muslim call to prayer from the Quran, an invocation of the Four Winds in the spiritual tradition of the First Nations, and a Christian prayer.

Then I spoke about the Bitter Herb and recited the Ten Plagues of our own generation. In a traditional Passover Seder, we would pour wine from our cups ten times in order to express our grief over the ancient Ten Plagues. In the same vein, I invited the gathered community to call out “Sorrow” 10 times as we absorbed the grief brought on by the modern plagues.

We shared some matzah that I passed around the circle — the Bread of Affliction that on the night of Exodus became the Bread of Freedom because it was baked in haste and urgency. Just so, I said must we move with what Dr. King called “the fierce urgency of Now,” to heal our planet before its wounds overcome us.

After the Matzah, Rose Berger of Sojourners magazine shared Palm branches around the circle and with them, the meaning of Palm Sunday — commemorating Jesus’ entry in a protest march into Jerusalem, opposing the violent and deadly Roman Empire just before Passover — the appropriate and risky time of remembering the downfall of Imperial Pharaoh.

Then we shared amongst us a large Globe of Earth, carrying it and singing as we walked to the White House fence, “We have the whole world in our hands — rivers and mountains in our hands, all our children in our hands, the whole world in our hands.”

Our action was videotaped, and we hope to be able to share the scene with you early next week. (The Shalom Center will be closed for the first two days of Passover.)

These are the Ten Plagues I recited, and below them, Ten Healings that accompanied the blessing of our Globe.

Ten Plagues

• Undrinkable water poisoned by fracking. (Sorrow!)
• Asthma: Lungs suffering from coal dust and gasoline fumes. (Sorrow!)
• Suffering and death for fish, birds, vegetation and human beings from the oil upheaval in the Gulf of Mexico. (Sorrow!)
• Smashed mountains and dead coal-miners in the lovely hills of West Virginia. (Sorrow!)
• Unheard-of droughts in Africa, setting off hunger, starvation, civil wars and genocide. (Sorrow!)
• Drought in Russia, setting off peat-bog fires and scarcity of wheat. (Sorrow!)
• Summer-long intense heat wave in Europe, killing thousands of elders. (Sorrow!)
• Unheard-of floods in Pakistan, putting one-fifth of the country under water. (Sorrow!)
• Superstorm Sandy, killing hundreds in Haiti and America. (Sorrow!)
• Years of drought and fires in Australia. (Sorrow!)
• Parched corn fields and dead crops in the U.S. corn-belt. (Sorrow!)

Ten Healings

• Creating organic farms in countrysides and cities. (L’chayyim, To life!)
• Wind-based energy: Purchasing home and company electric power from wind-based suppliers. (L’chayyim, To life!)
• Hybrid or electric cars. Families buy them; convince cities, government agencies and businesses to switch their auto fleets. (L’chayyim, To life!)
• Use public transportation. (L’chayyim, To life!)
• Family and congregational education/action to heal the Earth: At Bat/Bar Mitzvah time and teen-age baptisms/confirmations, “turning hearts of children and parents to each other, lest the Earth be utterly destroyed” (Quote from last passage of Malachi, last of the classical Hebrew Prophets). (L’chayyim, To life!)
• Vigils, picketing, civil disobedience at sites of mountain destruction by coal companies. (L’chayyim, To life!)
• Prevent the Tar Sands Pipeline. (L’chayyim, To life!)
• End fracking: Insist on moratoriums or prohibitions. (L’chayyim, To life!)
• Divestment by colleges, pension funds, religious communities, etc., from investment in fossil-fuel companies, shifting investment to renewable, sustainable energy. (L’chayyim, To life!)
• Carbon pricing: Insisting that Members of Congress put prices on carbon-fuel production and pay dividends from the incoming fees to American families. (L’chayyim, To life!)

The Plagues and the Blessings are part of a Healing Seder for the Earth that you can find, with seven questions and the symbolic foods and blessings, on our website at

https://theshalomcenter.org/content/palms-passover-interfaith-healing-seder-earth

Feel free to use it either as a whole this coming week or by choosing passages from it to add to your own Seder.

We are inspired by the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who was among the leaders of a profoundly religious and spiritual movement to heal us from the great dangers of war and injustice in his day:

“We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. … Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too late’.”

And we take note that even a leading secular journalist, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, has called for civil disobedience to insist on strong measures to heal the climate crisis.

If we go over the Climate Cliff now, experiencing Plagues in our own generation as the Bible describes the Ten Plagues — all eco-disasters — long ago, our grandchildren will live in misery and suffering.

Today’s Plagues endanger the web of life upon our planet, including the human race — and inflict the greatest harm on the poorest and most vulnerable among us. We are especially concerned by the effects on local communities and our planetary future of destructive, extreme energy extraction: mountaintop removal, fracking, Arctic and deep sea offshore oil drilling, and Tar Sands mining.

Out of our moral commitment to protect and heal God’s Creation, our religious communities need to be calling for a set of first-step changes that will sow the seeds of greater change, by committing the president and Congress to vigorous action.

As we undertookr civil disobedience at the White House, we addressed not only our government, but also religious communities throughout the country: In the name of Creator Spirit, Holy One of Being — JOIN US!

What were we urging that the president do to meet the needs of this critical hour in planetary time? He must take actions necessary to heal our communities and the Earth, such as these:

1. Permanently refuse permits for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, because tar-oil is among the most dangerous of the planet-heating forms of carbon.
2. Call now a National Summit Conference on the Climate Crisis to meet with the urgency that the crisis demands — including leaders of business, labor, academia, religious communities, governmental officialdom, science and other relevant bodies.
3. Publicly support and advocate for a carbon fee that will generate hundreds of billions of dollars, with provisions to ensure that working families and the poor are not harmed by higher carbon prices; for an end to subsidies to the coal, oil and gas industries; and for substantial subsidies for research, development, and use of renewable, sustainable and jobs-creating clean energy sources.

As we celebrate the Festival of Freedom, may we begin to think now what we need to do during this coming year to make it happen that hundreds of congregations join in the week before Pesach next year to face the Pyramids of Power of the Climate Pharaohs in our own communities, with or without civil disobedience.

Blessings of life, liberation, and healing for us all and for our Mother Earth, this Passover and Holy Week!

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March seems to be a busy time in New Orleans. The days are long and perfectly warm, the streets are full with beads and lawn chairs for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Super Sunday, and colleges throughout the country bring throngs of students on Service Learning Alternative Spring Breaks to rebuild the city that has suffered much blight in the wake of Katrina. Almost 8 years after the hurricane caused the levees to break and flood 80% of New Orleans white 15 passenger vans still hum in the streets steering volunteers eager to change the life of someone and in that process change their own lives.

The Alternative Break Service Learning Trip is a model for students to use the little free time that they have to do something radical to alter their college experience. This integrative experiential education offers a space for participants to challenge their preconceptions of areas and communities disparate from their own and in turn attempts to provide a substantial impact in community service for a particular area.

During my own spring break immediately following Katrina, I gutted houses and spent time in the Ninth Ward speaking with victims of the flooding that chose not to or couldn’t leave when the storm hit. This experience, coordinated by Hillel through the non-profit Operation Blessing, gave me an immense understanding of the reality of economic disparity in New Orleans and gave me a deep sense of fellowship in this service to strangers.

This past spring break once again the Jewish Farm School offered an alternative service learning model that brought students in direct contact with grassroots projects that are working to rebuild the soil, to bring life back into otherwise vacant and contaminated lots to feed the local community with sustainably farmed ‘groceries’ tended by neighbors. Urban Farming in New Orleans currently has turned 120 out of these 40,000 vacant lots into growing sites and local growers have the New Orleans Food and Farming Network to support, help fundraise and even train budding farmers. This volunteer organization has created a “network of local and regional activists, community stakeholders and non-profits to address issues of food security and equitable access to healthy, sustainable and culturally appropriate food.”

I was fortunate to co-lead groups of students from University of Pennsylvania, Loyola Marymont University, University of North Carolina and Washington University in St. Louis and in this week of first hand farming we weeded; pulled glass, rusted nails, broken tiles out of backyard dirt; planted new seeds in composted and mulched soil, rebuilt a greenhouse, kosher slaughtered three chickens, harvested bountiful amounts of kale, daikons, cabbage, oranges and cumquats; double dug new raised beds, hauled soil and free mulch; and all the while intentionally created space in community around food and our personal relationship with it in this very complex food system all through the lens of a Jewish kavanah (intention) for Tikkun Olam (mending the world).

This season in Louisiana is warm and blossoming – tomatoes are already showing true leaves, summer crops are readying in the greenhouse and the spring karpas (leafy greens) is not simply popping out of a melting snow ground but is vivaciously competing with cultivated plants for nutrients from the soil. As the second week of Alternative Spring Break trips began the night sky boasted the fact that the new lunar cycle had begun to bring in the month of Nissan and with it the season of Passover. It feels pretty resonant for me that the work that these groups were doing on this Spring Break Trip was ushering in Zman Cheiruteinu, the time of our Freedom.

The core curriculum that we focused on during the trip was based around issues of food justice and food security. These notions seek to ensure that there is fair and equal access to healthy and affordable food and though this would seem to be a fundamental right in the highly complex food system that we find ourselves today this is a messy and ‘oily’ business.

We visited areas of the city that are coined food deserts: areas whose residents do not have easy access to nutritious food because there are no grocery stores within walking distance, because their jobs prevent them from being able to shop at regular hours, because this food is too expensive or because the convenience stores down the street sell processed foods in boxes.

The New Orleans Food and Farming Network connected our group with urban farming projects that are taking this issue of disempowerment and reclaiming food sovereignty. We worked with Grow Dat Youth Farm that grows food for local residents while training high school teens in sustainable farming practices and social and environmental leadership. We worked with Ica at Our NOLA Garden that has three growing sites in New Orleans and grows food for the surrounding community. We worked with Ariel at P-Town Farms, a full-time Montessori school teacher that is transforming her concrete yard into a veggie, fruit and herb haven and we worked with Ramona at Lutz Farms who sells her produce to fine local restaurants so that she is able to sell her produce cheaper at market.

It wasn’t just the sunshine and the intense physical work out that was good for us, it was the honest passionate inspired stories of these farmers that truly affected and infected us. These urban growers have taken a system of food access that is mostly distant and anonymous and made it local and personal. They have reduced the amounts of petrol used to bring food from farm to fork and the amount of hands that food dollars meet before they reach the grower. They have created a space where community members can have hands on experience in growing food for themselves and each other and have created a bio-diverse environment in one that was otherwise desolate.

Students, some for the first time, were engaging in the issues of the multi layered food system with both their minds and their hands. By helping to further develop the projects of others that have taken a step to better food access in New Orleans we were engaging in a freedom from being slaves to agri-conglomerates that dictate where our food comes from and how much it will cost (financially and environmentally).

This is the liberation essence of my Passover. A time when I am completely turning my kitchen around and bringing a little more consciousness to the types of foods that I am eating. This empowerment is something I bring back with me to my East Bay home, an area with food desert issues of its own. One week is a seed – a seed to germinate in the right time with the right conditions. Whether this sprouting will result in these students buying a canteen to drink water out of, reading a label on an apple at the grocery store, seeking out their local farmers’ market, volunteering at their school’s student community garden, starting a composting system, growing a tomato plant in their dorm window, telling three friends about GMOs, or developing the world’s largest hydroponic food system, each participant has made a personal commitment with which to return home and these commitments are germinating out of the knowledge that there IS a food system of which we are a part and we can therefore choose where we wish to stand in this web. This knowing is a freedom in itself, the spring bud which welcomes new growth and as we bring in the season of our offering, chag haPesach, let our offering to our community be one where we continue to seek a sustainable system for ourselves and for the planet.

• Help the environment by reducing waste as you empty your home of chametz (leavened foods such as breads, pastas, etc). Give leftover bread and grain-based items to area food pantries rather than throwing them out.
• Clean your house using environmentally friendly cleaning products.
• As much as possible, buy your Passover fruits and vegetables from local, organic sources. This reduces your carbon footprint as you will not be purchasing produce flown in from hundreds of miles away.
• Use soy or beeswax candles for your Passover table. These create less soot and are more sustainable than paraffin candles.
• Avoid disposable plates and utensils. If your level of observance requires using separate dinnerware during Passover, invest in purchasing separate dishes that you can use over again each year. Don’t clog landfills by using plates, cups and cutlery that get thrown away after a single use.
• Use washable napkins and a washable table cloth for your Seders. This is another way to reduce waste.
• If travelling for Passover, consider carpooling with others and travelling at off-peak times to avoid wasting gas.

Have a joyous and green Passover!

This post originally appeared as part of Planet Jewish on jewishinstlouis.org at http://www.jewishinstlouis.org/blog.aspx?id=345

By Richard H. Schwartz, Ph.D.

Passover and vegetarianism? Can the two be related? After all, what is a Seder without gefilte fish, chicken soup, chopped liver, chicken, and other meats? And what about the shank bone to commemorate the paschal sacrifice? And doesn't Jewish law mandate that Jews eat meat to rejoice on Passover and other Jewish festivals?

An increasing number of Jews are turning to vegetarianism and are finding ways to celebrate vegetarian Passovers, while being consistent with Jewish teachings.

Contrary to a common perception, Jews are not required to eat meat at the Passover Seder or any other time. According to the Talmud (Pesachim 109a), since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, Jews need not eat meat to celebrate Jewish festivals. Scholarly articles by Rabbi Albert Cohen in the Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society and Rabbi J. David Bleich in Tradition magazine provide many additional sources that reinforce this point. Also, Israeli chief rabbis, including Rabbi Shlomo Goren, late Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Israel and Rabbi Sha'ar Yashuv Cohen, former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Haifa, were or are strict vegetarians.

The use of the shank bone on the Seder plate originated in the time of the Talmud as a means of commemorating the sacrifice of the paschal lamb. However, since the items on the Seder plate are only symbolic, many Jewish vegetarians replace the shank bone with a beet, its red color representing the blood of the sacrificed animals. The important thing is that no animal need be eaten or represented at the Seder table.

Jewish vegetarians see vegetarian values reinforced by several Passover themes:

1. At the Seder, Jews say, "Let all who are hungry come and eat". As on other occasions, at the conclusion of the meal, birkat hamazon is recited to thank God for providing food for the world's people. This seems inconsistent with the consumption of animal-centered diets, which involves the feeding of 70% of the grain grown in the United States to animals destined for slaughter and the importing of beef from other countries, while 20 million of the world's people die of hunger and its effects annually and nearly a billion of the world’s people are chronically hungry.

Rabbi Jay Marcus, Spiritual Leader of the Young Israel of Staten Island, saw a connection between simpler diets and helping hungry people. He noted that "karpas" (eating of greens) comes immediately before "yahatz" (the breaking of the middle matzah) for later use as the "afikomen" (dessert) in the Seder service. He concluded that those who live on simpler foods (greens, for example) will more readily divide their possessions and share with others.

2. Many Jewish vegetarians see connections between the oppression that their ancestors suffered and the current plight of the billions of people who presently lack sufficient food and other essential resources. Vegetarian diets require far less land, water, energy, pesticides, fertilizer, and other resources, and thus enable the better sharing of God's abundant resources, which can help reduce global hunger and poverty.

3. The main Passover theme is freedom, and at the Passover Seder we retell the story of our ancestors' slavery in Egypt and their redemption through God's power and beneficence. While acknowledging that only people are created in God’s image, many Jewish vegetarians also consider the "slavery" of animals on modern "factory farms". Contrary to Jewish teachings of tsa'ar ba'alei chayim (the Torah mandate not to cause unnecessary "pain to a living creature"), animals are raised for food today under cruel conditions in crowded confined spaces, where they are denied fresh air, sunlight, a chance to exercise, and the fulfillment of their natural instincts. In this connection, it is significant to consider that according to the Jewish tradition, Moses, Judaism's greatest leader, teacher, and prophet, was chosen to lead the Israelites out of Egypt because as a shepherd he showed great compassion to a lamb (Exodus Rabbah 2:2).

4. Many Jewish vegetarians advocate that we commemorate the redemption of our ancestors from slavery by ending the current slavery to harmful eating habits through the adoption of vegetarian diets.

5. Passover is the holiday of springtime, a time of nature's renewal. It also commemorates God's supremacy over the forces of nature. In contrast, modern intensive livestock agriculture and animal-centered diets have many negative effects on the environment, including air and water pollution, soil erosion and depletion, the destruction of tropical rain forests and other habitats, and contributions to global warming.

Jewish vegetarians view their diet as a practical way to put Jewish values into practice. They believe that Jewish mandates to show compassion to animals, take care of our health, protect the environment, conserve resources, and share with hungry people, and the negative effects that animal-centered diets have in each of these areas, point to vegetarianism as the ideal diet for Jews (and others) today.

Sources for further information on connections between Judaism and vegetarianism include:

1. The International Jewish Vegetarian Society (www.jvs.org.uk/)

2. Judaism and Vegetarianism by Richard Schwartz, new, revised edition (New York: Lantern, 2001)

3. Jewish Vegetarians of North America (JVNA): wwwJewishVeg.com, including over 150 articles at www.JewishVeg.com/schwartz by Richard H. Schwartz.

4. Micah Publications; the source for books on Judaism and vegetarianism and related issues; micah@micahbooks.com (www.micahbooks.com). They have published vegetarian-friendly Haggadahs, "Haggadah for the Liberated Lamb" and "Haggadah for the Vegetarian Family", both by Roberta Kalechofsky, founder and director of Jews for Animal Rights (JAR) and Micah Publications, which contains traditional and new material for a vegetarian Seder, including recipes, songs, notes, readings, and a bibliography, and "The Jewish Vegetarian Year Cookbook" by Roberta Kalechofsky and Rosa Rasiel, which includes many recipes suitable for Passover. They also have a vegetarian Passover cookbook and a videocassette that describes a vegetarian Seder.

Other books that have vegetarian recipes appropriate for Passover include "No Cholesterol Passover Recipes" by Debra Wasserman and Charles Stahler and "Vegan Passover Recipes" by Nancy Berkoff, both published by the Vegetarian Resource Group (www.vrg.org), and "Jewish Vegetarian Cooking" (the official cookbook of the International Jewish Vegetarian Society) by Rose Friedman (Thorsons Publishers).

By Richard H. Schwartz

In view of the many current environmental crises that face the world today, this pre-Passover period is a good time to consider environmental messages related to the holiday and the events and concepts related to the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt:

1. Today's environmental threats can be compared in many ways to the Biblical ten plagues:

* When we consider the threats to our land, water, and air, we can easily enumerate ten modern "plagues". For example: (1) climate change (2) rapid melting of glaciers and polar ice caps (3) destruction of tropical rain forests (4) acid rain (5) soil erosion and depletion (6) loss of biodiversity (7) water pollution (8) air pollution (9) an increase in the number and severity of storms and floods (10) increased use of pesticides, chemical fertilizer, and other toxic chemicals.
* The Egyptians were subjected to one plague at a time, while the modern plagues are threatening us simultaneously.
* The Jews in Goshen were spared the Biblical plagues, while every person on earth is imperiled by the modern plagues.
* Instead of an ancient Pharaoh's heart being hardened, our hearts today have been hardened by the greed, materialism, and waste that are at the root of current environmental threats.
* God provided the Biblical plagues to free the Israelites, while today we must apply God's teachings in order to save ourselves and our precious but endangered planet.

2. The Passover Seder is a time for questions, including the traditional "four questions." Additional questions can be asked related to modern environmental threats. For example: Why is this period different than all other periods? (At all other periods only local regions faced environmental threats; today, the entire world is threatened.) Why isn’t there more activism in the Jewish community (and other communities) about current environmental threats? Why aren't Jewish values applied toward the alleviation of environmental problems?

3. Rabbi Jay Marcus, rabbi emeritus of the Young Israel of Staten Island, saw a connection between simpler diets and helping hungry people. He commented on the fact that "karpas" (eating of greens) comes immediately before "yahatz" (the breaking of the middle matzah for later use as the "afikomen" (desert) in the seder service. He concluded that those who live on simpler foods (greens, for example) will more readily divide their possessions and share with others. The consumption of animal-centered diets involves the feeding of 70% of the grain grown in the United States to animals destined for slaughter and the importing of beef from other countries, while an estimated 20 million of the world's people die of hunger and its effects. This simpler diet would also have positive environmental effects since modern intensive livestock agriculture uses vast amounts of water, fuel, chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and other resources, and contributes to the destruction of habitats and many other environmental problems.

4. A Haggadah song at the Seder is "dayenu" (it would have been enough). The message of this popular song is relevant today when so many people seek to constantly increase their wealth and amass more possessions, with little thought of the negative environmental consequences.

5. An ancient Jewish legend indicates that Job's severe punishment occurred because when he was an advisor to Pharaoh he refused to take a stand when Pharaoh asked him what should be done with regard to the Israelites. This story can be discussed as a reminder that if we remain neutral and do not get involved in working for a better environment, severe consequences may follow.

6. According to Jewish tradition, Moses, Judaism's greatest leader, teacher, and prophet, was chosen to lead the Israelites out of Egypt because as a shepherd he showed great compassion to a lamb (Exodus Rabbah 2:2). Today, about 65 billion animals are raised annually for slaughter, mainly on factory farms under very cruel conditions, and raising food and providing water for these animals and getting rid of their wastes cause many environmental problems. Animal-based agriculture contributes significantly to climate change, deforestation, soil erosion, loss of biological diversity, and other environmental threats. Hence a shift toward vegan diets would help move our imperiled planet to a sustainable path.

In view of the above points, Passover would be a wonderful time to increasingly apply Jewish values in response to the many current environmental threats to humanity, in efforts to move our imperiled planet onto a sustainable path.

After reading the following article, http://www.voanews.com/english/news/environment/Climate-Change-Panel-Says-Expect-More-Extreme-Weather–144966925.html, titled “Climate Change Panel Says Expect More Extreme Weather,” it is hard not to make the immediate connection to the story of Pesach.

“The 594-page report is the work of 220 authors from 62 countries. It cites thousands of scientific studies. Enough is known, the editors say, to make good decisions about how to manage risks of climate-related disasters.” It discusses the prediction of these scientists that “While no evidence connects global warming with specific local weather event… warmer temperatures, boosted by CO2 and other gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, will trigger more intense droughts, heavier rainfall and stronger storms.” There is a high probability that weather during the past two years, including 1600 tornadoes that crisscrossed the United States, rainfall that was 80 percent more than the seasonal average in Thailand, and Russia’s hottest summer experienced in 500 years, is evidence of this shift. The IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri stated that “it’s very clear that heat waves are on the increase both in terms of numbers and duration” and “another important finding is the fact that extreme precipitation events are on the increase.” Not to mention that extreme weather disasters are cost $80 billion a year on average.

Having lived through some incredibly odd winters in NYC over the past two years, whether due to climate change or not, I think the issue is starting to creep back into the consciousness of regular citizens after several years of stagnation in terms of public discourse. I think Pesach is a perfect time to start up the conversation in our own communities. Although energy is consistently a hot topic (excuse the pun), climate change has been totally eclipsed by other issues. Maybe it needs to be rebranded because so the term global warming and climate change have both been so tainted by rhetoric and propaganda.

My suggestion is to just call it the “New Plague.” That way, whenever there is a snow storm in August, a hurricane in the Greenland, a flood in the Sahara, or a see level rise that overtakes small island countries, we can just say, “oh it’s that New Plague striking again.” We don’t have to think about why these events are occurring or event try to come together in order to create solutions for mitigation and adaptation. No, instead we can just pretend that it is G-d sending these events to serve a greater purpose.

The only thing I can’t figure out is the reasoning. Is there a metaphor here in that we are enslaved in some way and these events will free us?

Any clever suggestions would be appreciated.

The photovoltaic solar-panel array at Kibbutz Ketura is the first and currently only of its kind in Israel.

(Photo by David Krantz)

KIBBUTZ KETURA, Israel — During the first ever Passover we left Egypt and slavery, celebrating our freedom in the wilderness. It’s easy to forget that back then this stretch of the Arava Valley, a half-hour up the road from the hotels of Eilat, wasn’t part of the biblical Promised Land. No, this part of southern Israel was wilderness — our ancestors wandered through here after the Exodus. It was here, in the desert, where we gained our freedom from slavery to Pharaoh. But that was more than 3,400 years ago. Today, this part of the wilderness is a global center for solar-energy research. And today, it is here in the desert where we are gaining our freedom from slavery to fossil fuels.

Solar companies from all around the world send prototypes of new solar panels to be tested here, home to the highest levels of solar radiation on the planet. Think of it as a photovoltaic Big Apple: If solar panels can make it here, they can make it anywhere.

A few steps away from Methuselah — the tree germinated from a 2,000-year-old Masada date pit by Arava Institute researcher Dr. Elaine Soloway — the future of clean, renewable energy is getting a test run. Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed of the Arava Institute and William Weisinger of Israel’s AORA Solar are testing solar panels with new self-cleaning electrodynamic screens (EDS), designed to help keep dust off the panels. Dust can sap five percent of a solar panel’s efficiency, but EDS essentially uses an invisible electric broom to sweep off the dust, brushing away dust particles with an electric field that moves across the panel.

Another solar panel being tested here at Ketura is the bifacial solar cell, developed by Israel’s bSolar Ltd. Basically a double-sided solar panel, the bifacial system takes advantage of the sunlight that strikes the ground and bounces back toward the sky, allowing bifacial cells to capture about a quarter more energy than conventional photovoltaic cells.

Just south of here and adjacent to the kibbutz is Israel’s first and only photovoltaic solar-energy farm, operated by the Arava Power Company and producing five megawatts of electricity. But that’s not enough. Less than one percent of Israel’s electric grid is powered by clean, renewable energy such as solar. Fortunately, the country is getting ready to increase that amount as it prepares to reach its goal of 10 percent of its grid energy coming from renewables by the year 2020.

Ketura is going to have some company: Last month the government issued 19 licenses for photovoltaic farms that will generate a total of 27 megawatts. Not to be outdone, last week the Arava Power Company announced plans to build a new solar field here with a capacity of 40 megawatts.

As a basis of comparison, Eilat consumes about 120 megawatts of electricity.

The government also has approved a 60-megawatt thermal-solar facility outside Kibbutz Mashabei Sadeh and a 120-megawatt thermal-solar farm by Kibbutz Zeelim. Whereas photovoltaic-solar panels directly convert sunlight into electric energy, thermal-solar panels concentrate the sunlight on a central source, heating water into steam in order to turn a turbine. The process is similar to conventional fossil-fuel energy production, except because the raw material is sunlight and not coal — the largest source of Israel’s electricity — thermal-solar energy is pollution free.

Theordor Herzl dreamed of an Israel powered by clean, renewable energy and, specifically, not coal. Instead Israel’s powered by coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, and a large contributor to poor air quality in Israel’s largest cities. The effect? More people die from air pollution in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area alone than die from terrorism and wars combined, according to the World Health Organization.

When the world frees itself from dependence on fossil fuels, it will be using solar technologies developed here at Ketura. And this Passover, Israel’s taking a step closer to freedom from the polluting tyranny of fossil fuels. This year, there’s more solar power planned for Eilat. Next year in Jerusalem.

Cross-posted from GreenZionism.org

Along with the Council for a Beautiful Israeland Green Now, Teva Ivri has just announced the first “Greenest Synagogue Contest” ever held in Israel. By launching the contest during the pre-Passover season, we encourage Jews throughout Israel to examine our houses of prayer – synagogues – to see if they are conducting themselves with a sense of communal responsibility and a sense of protecting G-d’s world.

Although greening synagogues has become a popular way for Jewish communities in the United States and Europe to engage in environmental action, this is the first campaign of its kind in Israel. The contest aims to raise Israelis’ awareness about the links between Judaism and the environment and to encourage concrete change in Jewish institutions. Teva Ivri will provide information and guidance to synagogues starting out on the path to sustainability. Over the course of several months, participating synagogues will be evaluated based on their actualization of environmental and social justice values.

So what makes a synagogue green?

A green synagogue strives to:

• conserve resources in its activities and in the maintenance of its building.

• develop an inviting outdoor space for secure play and inspiring learning.

• be accessible to people with disabilities.

• engage in study of social-environmental issues, in theory and in practice.

• serve as a model of how humans take responsibility for G-d’s Creation.

As deputy director of the Council for a Beautiful Israel, Weitzman Mashiach, expresses:

“A synagogue is a focal point of life for all of us, whether it is daily, on Jewish holidays, or for Jewish life cycle events. In some communities, especially in smaller Israeli villages, it is the center of all communal experience. In galvanizing communities to green their synagogues, we are emphasizing that the institution that has guided the Jewish people for over 2000 years can be relevant to our efforts toward environmental protection and better quality of life.”

The contest has generated interest from a number of prominent religious leaders and educators in Israel. HaRav Yisrael Lau, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv and former Chief Rabbi of Israel, will preside over the evaluation committee. The co-chair of the committee will be Professor Zechariah Madar, the head scientist of the Ministry of Education. The Association of Religious Councils in Israel will call upon religious councils throughout the country to actively recruit synagogues for the competition.

How can you get involved?

Teva Ivri is happy to provide guidance to any community in Israel looking to “go green.” We also invite Jewish communities from abroad to support their Israeli counterparts as they take on more environmental responsibility.

For more information on how to integrate sustainability values into your synagogue, or to share your synagogue’s “greening” experience, contact info@tevaivri.org.il.

Contest winners will be announced in October 2012 during Teva Ivri’s annual Shabbat Noach (Sustainability Shabbat) celebrations.

The Exodus is not just a historical remembrance, it is a personal and immediate story as well; "And you shall explain to your son on that day, "it is because of what the Lord did for me when I went free from Egypt'" (Exodus 13:8). Thus, the story of the redemption from Mitzrayim serves as a national and historical template that should be applied on an individual and present level. This is the idea of biblical self-help — that the story of our past holds the key to our future. As Jews, it is our duty to contemplate the concepts of freedom and redemption as laid out in the story of the Exodus and apply these lessons to our lives on a daily basis. We must ask ourselves difficult questions, such as "In what ways am I enslaved?" "In what ways am I free?" "Where am I stuck (constricted in a narrow place) in my life?" and "How can I merit redemption?". These are not easy questions, and there are no easy answers. We must be brutally honest with ourselves and with each other in order to transform our state of exile into a state of deliverance. Indeed, most of us are enslaved in ways that we are not even consciously aware of. This is the deepest level of enslavement — when you don't even realize that you are enslaved. For once you are able to grasp and articulate what it is that holds you down, you have taken the first step toward freedom from its spell.

So it is that I find myself reflecting on the state of freedom in America, and have found, unfortunately, that it is in a sad state of affairs indeed. Since last Pesach, we saw the U.S. government commit murder of American citizens without charges or trial. Then we saw the passage of the NDAA into "law", which effectively ended the 700 year legal precedent of Habeus Corpus as laid out in the Magna Carta (as well as the much older Torah law, which also requires a trial in a system of Justice). Most recently, Mr. Obama signed an executive order entitled "National Defense Resources Preparedness", which gives the 'right' of the government to take any resources or personal labor it deems necessary for the national defense. The writing is on the wall for anyone who cares to read it. We are all prisoners in a system gone horribly wrong. That the curtailment of these liberties is done in the name of our own 'protection' adds irony and insult to the situation. Whether we acknowledge these uncomfortable facts or not is a question only of how much we are paying attention. We are not free, in any political sense of the word, and we seem to be losing what little freedoms that still remain at an ever accelerating rate.

Thus I find the message of Pesach speaks ever more poignantly, as the world sinks deeper into galut. We must remember that the Lord delivered us from Egyptian bondage in order to tie us to His Will, as laid out in the Torah values of tzedek, emet, v shalom (justice, truth and peace). We Jews are no strangers to coping in times where injustice prevails. During the Pesach seder, we tell the story of the Bnei Brak seder during the times of the Roman occupation of Israel. There Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar Ben Azaryah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarfon were reclining and discussing the Exodus from Egypt, illustrating that we must keep the memory of redeption alive even in the darkest hours. While we can no longer count on miracles like the parting of the Reed Sea, we fortunately have the holiday of Purim to prepare us for the redemption of Pesach. Purim reminds us that the Lord works through human actions as exemplified by Esther's bravery and courage in confronting the King regarding the injustice of Haman's plans. Thus we must work to bring the light of truth where darkness lies, and Justice to where tyranny reigns, on both physical and spiritual levels. Today is the Spring Equinox, the perfect balancing point between light and darkness. By remembering the lessons of the Exodus story, we push ever onward toward the light, where Justice and Righteousness shall prevail.

The Shalom Center has created a 40th Anniversary New Interfaith Freedom Seder for the Earth to help us free ourselves from the greatest dangers of our time: What are the Ten Plagues endangering the earth and human life today, and what are the Ten Blessings we ourselves can bring to heal the earth and our own societies?

If you want to use this text, or part of it, for an Earth Seder in your own community — perhaps a week before Pesach or for Earth Day on April 22, or the weekend before or after — please do so — and we ask you to make a contribution to The Shalom Center to help us do this and similar work. We suggest a donation of $18 plus $1 for each participant in your Seder. Click on the "Donate" headline near the top of the left-hand column at http://www.theshalomcenter.org/ to contribute, and please let us know what you are doing by writing Office@shalomctr.org.

Click just below to download a full pdf of the New Freedom Seder for the Earth.! (It includes an amazing full-color graphic cover by Avi Katz.) If you prefer to have a text copy that you can easily edit, click here.

But our preparations are not only about shopping, cooking, invites and the changeover of dishes. Every year, we spend at least a little time considering what we should talk about at the seder table. We try to discuss something related to the theological and spiritual themes of the holiday. Usually, our discussion centers on the ethics of justice and liberation and how they apply to a some particular case in the world today.

The theme of justice is central to Passover and many of the texts in the Haggadah, Torah and Haftarah readings mention the connection between freedom and justice. The Haftarah for the last day of Passover is taken from the book of Isaiah (chapters 10-12). Chapter 11 contains the famous vision of the ideal ruler, descended from David, who will be filled with the spirit of God which will fill him with wisdom, valor and insight. This king will then rule with justice and will protect the poor of the land. At the same time, humanity and the rest of Creation will return to an Edenic state where there are no predators and no prey; where “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.” (v. 6) and “the land shall be filled with devotion to the Lord as water covers the sea.” (v. 9b)

This vision is on many levels profoundly unnatural and unsuitable for modern ecological and political sensibilities. For example, biologically there can be no life without death, and today we would demand that justice is participatory and does not depend on a single male royal authority. Nonetheless the vision still stirs us emotionally as a desire for peace, justice and harmony in the world.

I look at the vision as also one of sustainability: if we have a political system that is equitable only then can we begin to live within the rhythms of the natural world. Justice in the human world is intimately bound up with a more sustainable relationship with Creation. So I hope for such a world where peace and harmony result from justice and sustainability.

But there is another vision in the Hebrew Bible that warns us of what will happen if we don’t create such a world. In the Book of Amos (5:18-25) the prophet mocks those who wish for “the Day of the Lord,” thinking that the end of human history will be pleasant and good. He says that the end will be destruction: “It shall be darkness, not light! As if a man should run from a lion and be attacked by a bear!” (v. 18b-19a) Creation will not be benign but the instrument of God’s judgment over an unjust world. God does not want our festivals, our hymns or our sacrifices, “But let justice well up like water, righteousness like an unfailing stream.” (v. 24)

This last verse is often quoted in a positive way by both Jews and Christians but I think that they miss the point when it is not put in context. Amos is referring to a new Flood as in Noah’s day that will wipe the slate of Creation clean of the unjust. It will not be a time of harmony but of destruction. It will be a cleansing of the impurities of human injustice. Injustice leads to environmental degradation which leads to instability and violence.

Thomas Homer-Dixon is a political scientist whosehas focused on threats to global security and on how societies adapt to complex change. He is widely regarded as a central figure in the environment and security debate and has significantly shaped the discussions in this field. In his book, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence (1999) he wrote:

…scarcity is often caused by a severe imbalance in the distribution of wealth and power that results in some groups in a society getting disproportionately large slices of the resource pie, whereas, others get slices that are too small to sustain their livelihoods. Such unequal distribution—or what I call structural scarcity—is a key factor in virtually every case of scarcity contributing to conflict…(p. 15)

The choice lies before us: we can work to create justice and stability now in a way that will bring equity, peace and harmony, or we can continue on the path to scarcity, conflict and environmental destruction.

Let use this time of Passover preparation to consider the real meaning of the festival and be provoked to take action.

Pesach has passed, and in Israel everyone is recovering from a week of eating matzah and intensive family time. We are happy to share two recently published Passover-related ideas, both of which raise environmental awareness in the realms of general observance and Jewish law (halacha):

Biur Chametz in a Composter – Removal of Leavened Products Before Passover

Harav Yuval Sherlow, an active member of Teva Ivri’s steering committee and a well-known spiritual figure in Israel, issued an halachic (Jewish legal) ordinance stating that it is permissible to bury chametz in a composter three days before the holiday, in place of burning it. For those who still prefer to burn their chametz, Rav Sherlow emphasized that it is forbidden to burn it inside a plastic bag, as is common in many places in Israel, because of the resulting air pollution.

The ordinance was published by Teva Ivri in several media outlets, and reflected a new type of conversation in Israel – one in which a composter is a common accessory that needs to be considered and applied to the establishment of halacha. We believe that this is a positive step toward incorporating environmental topics into both halachic discussions and into mainstream Israeli thought.

A Socially and Environmentally Aware Seder Plate

In its pre-Passover publications in the Israeli media, Teva Ivri called special attention to the social and environmental aspects of the Seder plate. Hundreds of Israeli families were careful this year to ensure that their Seder plate imparted the message of freedom not only for the Jewish people but also for animals and homeless or poor people.

For example, free-range eggs on the Seder plate teach that on the holiday of freedom, it is impossible to enjoy eggs that are laid by chickens raised in terrible conditions of captivity.

Vegetables on the Seder plate (maror, charoset, karpas) from a local source are considered to be mehadrin – the most stringent form of kashrut – because they travel straight from the producer to the consumer. The use of local products at the Seder reminds us of the importance of personal connections in our habits of consumption and of our refusal to become enslaved to corporate brand names.

These messages from Teva Ivri were well-received by the Israeli public, proving that the climate is right for increasing environmental awareness in Israel and throughout the Jewish world.

Blessings for freedom and liberty,

Einat Kramer – Director, Teva Ivri

May It Be Enough

I have always loved the part of the Pesach Seder when we go through Dayenu. I think the fact that the prayer is so fun for children who get to take their voices from a whisper up to a roar makes it one of those moments every year that brings years of Pesach memories flashing back. However, as I have grown older I tend to focus on the word itself: Dayenu. I think the idea of being thankful for every step that the Jews took as they were able to leave Egypt, make their way towards Sinai to receive the Torah, and then into the Promised Land where the Holy Temple was eventually built, is important. It is a great lesson that we are thankful for each and every step, even if it ending after any of the steps really may not have been enough. I think by viewing these 15 steps of the Dayenu ritual it helps us as Jews understand how vital a role each and every step played in the Jews making their way from bondage to freedom. The 15 steps taken together were enough.

I think that this is the same view we must take when thinking about the state of our natural world. Every step in the process of working towards creating a clean and sustainable environment is vital, but if all of the steps do not come together to culminate in meaningful changes, it will not be enough. I pray that we can look back in 50 years and say that :

“If we had only written emails to our elected representatives, it would have been enough.”

“If we had only made phone calls and visited our Congressional leader’s offices, Dayenu.”

“If we had only spent time in our individual lives to reduce our own impact on the environment, Dayenu.”

“If we had only sat down with our Rabbi and Jewish educators to stress the importance of including a message of environmental sustainability in our synagogues, Dayenu.”

“If we had only passed meaningful clean energy legislation in our own country, Dayenu.”

“If nations of the world came together to address environmental issues as a global community, Dayenu.”

Obviously this list could go on but, I think the point I am trying to make is clear. Every step we take, whether as an individual, a community group, or a nation is vital to achieving larger environmental goals. However, it will only be enough if we continue to take these steps which can then hopefully culminate in a moment of, Dayenu.

During this Pesach, I hope you will bring this message to your Seder table. The work we do regarding Tikkun Olam, whether related to the environment, homelessness, modern day slavery, or any other important social issue, is so important. We all have limitations, both or time and resources, so we must do as much as we can and hope that combined with the actions of others it will be enough.

Kenya Hi Ratzon. May It Be So.

We offer this reading and letter writing opportunity for you and your guests this Pesach. Hag Sameach!

The First Plague

And the fish that were in the Nile died and the Nile stunk, and the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile, and the blood was in all the land of Egypt. – Shemot (Exodus) 7:21

The Nile was a miraculous source of life for the Egyptians. Worshipped as a God, it has no tributaries for its final 900 miles. It was the water of the Nile that drew Jacob’s family down to Egypt to escape drought and subsequently led to our people’s enslavement.

Before the first plague, Pharaoh was warned to free the Israelites or risk having the Nile turned to blood. The destruction of this life giving source should have been enough to break the will of Pharaoh and compel him to let our people go. But it wasn’t. Nine more plagues followed. The interest of oppressors in maintaining their grasp on power is strong and not easily broken.

Now we are faced with a similar crisis. Pittsburgh is home to Three Rivers. Unfortunately, our modern day Pharaohs are controlled by corporate interests whose actions risk are bringing on a modern day plague that threatens our water.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a method of extracting natural gas from shale formations by drilling deep into the earth and injecting a slurry of water, sand and a proprietary blend of chemicals. This slurry fractures the shale and releases natural gas trapped within it. Much of the water injected is pulled back up to the earth. Some stays below threatening groundwater. The waste water which is removed is salty and contains many minerals from the shale formations including some which are toxic and radioactive.

Pennsylvania is the only state among the top 15 gas producing states not to tax the extraction of gas from fracking and the only one to allow wastewater to be disposed of in state waterways. In 2007, 99 permits were issued for fracking operations in Pennsylvania, by 2010 that number had skyrocketed to 3,445 taxing overburdened inspectors who are having their findings scrutinized by political appointees in Harrisburg.

The Israelites had to cry out, they had to demand freedom, before they could be liberated. The message of Pesach is not only a celebration of liberation, but a reminder that that we are given freedom for a purpose. In the seder we hear, "Let my people go that they may serve me". One of the lessons of our people’s Exodus to freedom is that we are called upon to speak truth to power. Now is the time for you to let your leaders know that they must act to avert the coming plague and save our environmental and personal health through the enactment and enforcement of appropriate environmental regulations and the careful monitoring and study of environmental and human health effects.

If you are moved to action, please sign and send the accompanying letter to Governor Corbett (attached)

You are also encouraged to donate your time and money to Clean Water Action – PA (http://www.cleanwateraction.org/pa)

Finally, visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Pipeline for daily updates: http://shale.sites.post-gazette.com/

Chapter 47 of Genesis provides a striking contrast between the fortunes of the Children of Jacob and the fortunes of the Egyptians and Canaanites who are suffering through a seven year famine. In this chapter, the famine in Canaan and the earlier revelation of Joseph’s position of power have led the Children of Jacob to emigrate to Egypt, where they are set up with food and land holdings in the Goshen area, which is described as the “best of the land.”

"Then Joseph settled his father and his brothers and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded. And Joseph provided his father, his brothers, and all his father’s household with food, according to the number of their dependents." (Gen 47:11-12).

Although not able to live in the land of their promised inheritance, the Children of Jacob enjoy a high standard of living and material comforts after moving to Egypt. “Thus Israel settled in the land of Egypt,in the land of Goshen. And they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful and multiplied greatly.” (Gen 47:27) This position of enjoying great material comforts while living in Diaspora is not unlike the position many American Jews find themselves in today. American Jews certainly have risen to positions of influence and great material wealth that living in the world’s “greatest super-power” has provided. Just as Egypt was the super-power of that time and provided food for the rest of the world, so America has been the super-power of the 20^th century, and has provided the majority of the world’s grain supplies from the 1930’s onward, thus earning it the title of “Breadbasket of the World”.

In sharp contrast to this state of comfort and security, the other inhabitants of Egypt are reduced to a state of indentured servitude as a result of Joseph’s economic policies during the seven years of famine. Joseph had wisely advised Pharaoh to stockpile grain during the seven years of plenty in order to have enough in store for the seven years of famine that lay ahead. Now that the seven years of famine had begun, Joseph exploited these stockpiles of food in order to concentrate all wealth, land, and power into the hands of the Pharaoh. During the first year of the famine, Joseph sold the food for all the money in Egypt and Canaan. Once the money had run out, Joseph traded food for livestock and herds of animals. Once the money and livestock had all been concentrated in Pharaoh’s hands, Joseph then acquired all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, and made all the people into servants. Joseph then allowed the people to plant seeds, but mandated that 20% of everything they grew would belong to the Pharaoh, thus keeping them in a position of serfdom. (Gen 47:13-26). This story here described mimics what is happening worldwide today with regard to the consolidation of wealth, land, and power in the hands of a few over the welfare of the world’s population as a whole. Today, banks, multi-national corporations and corrupt governments have taken on the role of Pharaoh in ammassing enormous wealth at the expense of the world’s poor.

To be fair, Joseph did indeed save people from starvation, and for this the rabbis often praise him in his handling of the affair. However, Jospeh was also directly responsible for the poverty, enslavement and land appropriation of these people into the hands of Pharaoh. Could not a more equitable and egalitarian approach have been taken regarding planning for this catastrophe and its aftermath? What if Joseph had announced to everyone that there would be 7 good years proceeded by 7 years of famine, so that the people could stockpile food for themselves? What if Joseph had sold the food at a lower cost so that people would not starve but also would not be bankrupted? Perhaps this would not have generated great wealth for Pharaoh, but it would have been a more compassionate approach towards those who were suffering from hunger.

The contrast between the material comforts of the Israelites in Goshen compared to the poverty and suffering of the Egyptians during this same period is not often discussed by Rabbinnic authorities or others. For in admitting that the Israelites had cush lives that they had acquired through nepotism, while the rest of Egypt went through radical totalitarian upheaval, is not an easy situation to confront. Jewish people today often reflect on the hardships of slavery while in Egypt, and yet neglect to mention these years of material abundance that preceeded them, even as we were witnesses (and perhaps accessories) to the enslavement of the Egyptians during that time. Perhaps we should just chalk up this whole affair to “Divine Providence” and thus wash our hands of any collective responsibility we might share through Joseph’s actions for the enslavement of other people. Perhaps our own cognitive dissonance would rather remain undisturbed than to admit that Joseph was the instrumental player in enslaving the Egyptians into Pharaoh’s hands.

However, if we are to learn from this story and apply it to our lives today, we must confront the actions of Joseph in an honest and critical way. For while Joseph and the Israelites were successful and materially comfortable for a period of time, eventually this time of prosperity subsided and a new King arose who “knew not Joseph.” (Exodus 1:8) In time, the Israelite were also made into slaves of the Egyptian empire, just as others had been during Joseph’s reign. The Torah thus illustrates the Karmic principle of “that which you do unto others you do onto yourself.” Their positions of wealth and comfort having fallen abruptly by the wayside, the children of Israel were then subjected to 400 years of degrading slavery, which began to forge them into the nation that they were to become. We must ask whether it was not Joseph’s actions of enslaving people during the famine that caused us to later become slave ourselves. Had Joseph divined a more equitable solution to the problem of food distribution during times of famine, perhaps the Israelites would have been spared the experience of slavery themselves. Of course, we cannot answer these hypothetical questions definitively, but they are worth considering. In this day and age, we face many similar circumstances to that period in Egypt, so we would be advised to learn from our history lest we be doomed to repeat it.

The lessons from this period in our history seem incredibly applicable to the current economic and environmental context of today. As mentioned previously, American Jewry of today has had a good share of material prosperity not unlike that during our initial time in Goshen. Just as the enormous wealth of Egypt was consolidated into the hands of the Pharaoh through Joseph’s policies, so to today enormous quantities of wealth are being stockpiled in the hands of banks, multi-national corporations and governments that do not represent their people. Even the control of seeds themselves, which Joseph acquired and then leveraged to force people into servitude is again playing itself out in the form of corporate control of the global food supply through genetic modification of seed and the patent laws which protect such stockpiling. So too the speculators, commodities traders and government subsidies cause the price of food to be artificially high and thus generate enormous profits for themselves even while hundreds of thousands of people the world over cannot afford to feed themselves. Just as the famine in Egypt was ‘severe on the land’, we are now facing a depletion of water resources of epic proportions which could well cause famines in the future.

We would all do well to recognize the moral of this story; that the concentration of wealth, power and food cannot continue indefinitely without terrible results. We cannot remain forever immune to the deleterious effects that such policies have on people the world over. Just as the Israelites were made into slaves only after first witnessing the Egyptians being forced into slavery, so today must we recognize the patterns of injustice inherent in the current military/industrial/global petro-chemical system going on around us, even if we have not yet fallen prey to this system ourselves. By proactively recognizing and addressing these injustices, we can attempt to alter the system before it is too late. Should the concentration of wealth and resources continue to be monoplized by the powerful at the expense of the world’s poor, as it has been for some time now, we can at least take some solace from the ultimate fate of Pharaoh, who suffered through the ten plagues and was finally washed away in the Sea of Reeds, his wealth and empire decimated. However, better than waiting for the eventual destruction of those who have profitted from exploitation, is to end the systems of exploitation in the first place. Such reform is only possible through honest introspection into our own complicity in these systems of tyranny. Let us learn from the Torah and reflect on the successes as well as the shortcomings of our forefathers, in order to navigate a better way forward for ourselves and all humanity. Our future depends on it.

Pesach is coming! The first seder is Monday night, April 18. In the frenzy of cleaning, we sometimes forget the importance of protecting the environment. To keep you centered in this busy time, Canfei Nesharim offers resources to help you remember, and remind your community, to "clean green."

Great resources to help you clean green this year:

• Recipes for green cleaning products,
• Links to eco-friendly cleaning products for order,
• Tips for healthy Pesach cleaning,
• and some reminders about what Pesach is really all about.

Program Ideas

• Make a Clean Sweep this Pesach: resources to help your community dispose properly of non-trash waste such as batteries, CFLs, and electronics.
• Make Your Own Green Cleaners: a program for 6-10 year olds and their families

Counting the Omer begins on the second night of Pesach.

• Download Canfei Nesharim's 5771 Omer Counter!

Explore all our Pesach resources today.

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 2/3/2009

• Festivals, Life-cycle, & Climate crisis

• Global Scorching

• Justice & immigration

• Pesach
• Environmental Justice

• Globalization and Economic Justice

• Interreligious Relations

• Justice and Gender

SEDER FOR THE EARTH: Facing the Plagues & Pharaohs of Our Generation

The Shalom Center has created the text and the organizing mechanisms for you to shape a new Freedom Seder for the Earth in your own community, challenging the plagues and pharaohs of our day and undertaking healing actions by us all.

Copyrights by the authors of their specific passages. Copyright © 2009 by The Shalom Center for the Seder as a whole.

• Feel free to quote passages or to use the Seder as a whole for your own Haggadah, on two conditions:

(1) writing The Shalom Center at Office@shalomctr.org to let us know how you are using it and to consult with us about a possible fee that fits your situation. One possibility would be to donate $18 plus $1 for each participant in your Seder.

(2) including the following permissions line: This passage is drawn from The Shalom Center's Freedom Seder for the Earth. Copyright © 2009 by The Shalom Center. See http://www.theshalomcenter.org

• Thank you!

If you would like to have a printable downloadable PDF of the Earth Seder, including a full-color cover graphic by Avi Katz, please click here.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE:

In every generation, Pharaoh.
In every generation, Freedom.

About three thousand years ago, ancient Israelites fused a shepherds' spring celebration of the birthing of lambs and a farmers' spring celebration of the sprouting of barley into a spring celebration of their liberation from slavery and the downfall of a tyrant at the hands of YHWH, the Breath of Life. They celebrated the overthrow of tyrants by gathering a million strong, bringing barley-bread and newborn lambs to the Temple in Jerusalem.

About two thousand years ago, the Jewish people reshaped that celebration into a Seder, a story and meal that could be eaten and told at home. The Passover story and celebration entered the memory stream of Christianity as well, through the Palm Sunday demonstrations of a group of Jews who came to ancient Jerusalem one spring, part of the general Jewish ferment against the Roman Empire. This particular group was led by Jesus, waving palm branches as a symbol of resistance. It entered Christianity more deeply still through the teachings of Jesus in the Last Supper, which seems to have been a Passover Seder.

Still later, Islam welcomed Moses as a prophet, as it is written:

In the name of Allah, most benevolent, ever-merciful. These are the verses of the illuminating Book. We narrate to you from the history of Moses and Pharaoh in all verity, for those who believe. The Pharaoh became high and mighty in the land, and divided the people into different classes. He impoverished one class, slaying its males and sparing its women, for he was indeed a tyrant. We [God] wished him to favor those who were weak in the land and make them leaders and heirs and establish them in the country. (Al-Quran, 28: 1-6; Ahmed Ali translation)

In modern times, the experience of slavery for African-Americans and their hope of liberation were crystallized into dozens of songs and thousands of sermons about the Exodus of ancient Israelites from slavery.

In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King was planning to take part in a Passover Seder with the family of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched and prayed and struggled alongside him against racism and militarism in America. But ten days before the Seder, Dr. King was murdered, called across a different river to a different Land of Promise.

His death called forth a Black uprising in many American cities, followed by the US Army's armed occupation of many inner-city communities, including my neighborhood in Washington DC.

Walking past the troops as I prepared for that Passover 41 years ago, I was overwhelmed to find myself feeling and thinking, "This is Pharaoh's Army!"

That experience renewed and transformed my own understanding of the Seder. I felt myself called to write a Freedom Seder that would celebrate the freedom struggles of Black America and of other peoples alongside the Jewish tale of liberation. It was published in Ramparts magazine and as a tiny pocket-sized book in 1969, illustrated by Lloyd McNeill, a Black artist-activist.

On April 4, 1969, the first anniversary of Dr. King's death and the third night of Passover that year, a group called Jews for Urban Justice sponsored the first Freedom Seder. It was held in the basement of Lincoln Congregational Temple, the oldest African American Congregational Church in Washington, DC. About 800 people—Blacks, Jews, white Christians—took part. The Seder was broadcast in New York by WBAI and across Canada by the CBC.

In 1970, the Freedom Seder was published by Holt Rinehart Winston. It was celebrated by about 4,000 people in the Cornell University Fieldhouse, providing an opportunity for the brief liberation from underground of Father Daniel Berrigan, an anti-war resister who was being pursued by the FBI.

During the years since 1969, the original Freedom Seder has seeded a great harvest of new versions of the Seder that have spoken to many forms of freedom: feminism, peace between Israelis and Palestinians, ending the danger of nuclear holocaust, achieving eco-sanity, solidarity with Latin American movements against tyrannical rulers, personal spiritual liberation and more. For millennia, from year to year to year to year, the Seder has renewed the lives of families and friends, has welcomed the newborn and accompanied the dying.

Now it is we who renew the Seder, rebirthing the Telling of freedom itself as the Telling rebirths us.

Forty years after the first Freedom Seder, the profound questions Dr. King raised in his Riverside Church speech exactly one year before his death –– militarism, racism, materialism as the triplets of danger corrupting American society – have risen before us again, as he warned they might. The link between constant warfare abroad and constant shortfalls in meeting human needs at home has become even clearer. Even larger numbers of people have lost their jobs and stand on the edge of the pit of poverty. Materialism run amok threatens to gobble up the earth, to kill thousands of species and disrupt the very climate that weaves our web of life .

Forty years after the first Freedom Seder, new Pharaohs have arisen. The institutional Pharaohs of our day are pressing down not just one people, one community, or another, but all the peoples on our planet and the web of life itself. In this Freedom Seder, we address Dr. Martin Luther King’s warning about “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism,” which have threatened the very earth that sustains us all.

For the Passover story reminds us: not only do new Pharaohs arise in every generation; so also do new grass-roots movement to free ourselves from these new pharaohs. Forty years after the first Freedom Seder, America today stands also on the brink of hope, "mixing memory with desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. "

So we celebrate and we join these grass-roots movements focused on concern for earth. After all, this festival began with shepherds and farmers celebrating the renewal of life in springtime. The miracles of barley sprouting and lambs being born inspired the earliest celebrations of the earth. The greens and herbs, unleavened bread and roasted eggs that are part of the Seder meal preserve this aspect of the journey.

In the biblical story of the Liberation and in the tale told during the traditional Seder, we recall that the ancient Pharaoh brought Ten Plagues upon the earth. All of them were ecological disasters: the rivers became undrinkable; frogs burst all boundaries as their natural predators vanished; cattle were struck by mad cow disease; locusts swarmed and devoured the crops; a climate disaster—unprecedented hailstorms—befell the Land; even those whose eyes had been closed to suffering were blinded by a sandstorm of darkness so thick it could be felt.

These plagues befell the land because of Pharaoh's stubbornness, his arrogance, his hardheartedness—his addiction to his own power, an addiction so strong that he could not abandon tyranny even when his stubbornness brought destruction on his own people, how own household.

Oppression of human beings and destruction of the earth go hand in hand. Our ancient forebears could see that there was a connection. They called it "YHWH, Yyyyyhhhhwwwwhhhh," the Interbreathing of all life, but they could not spell out the specific practices and processes by which these two oppressions were joined. Today we can.

Today as well, we face Plagues that trouble the earth and all humanity. Who and what are the institutional pharaohs in our time? What are the destructive Plagues of our own generation? What can we do to bring Ten Blessings, Ten Healings, on the earth in our own lifetimes?

It is time for a new birth of freedom, time for a NEW FREEDOM SEDER.

– Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Director
— Arlene Goldbard, Chair of the Board

The Shalom Center www.shalomctr.org, 6711 Lincoln Drive, Philadelphia PA 19119. 215/844-8494

WISDOM TOWARD THE JOURNEY

" Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision."
— Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1970

"If we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.."
— Dr. Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967

Before entering the Hajj {Pilrimage to Mecca]) which is the beginning of a great change and revolution, you must declare your intention. It is the intention of a "transferral" from your house 
to the house of the people, from life to love, from the self to Allah, from slavery to freedom, from racial discrimination
to equality, sincerity and truth, from being clothed to being naked, from a daily life to an eternal life and from 
selfishness and aimlessness to devotion and responsibility.
— Ali Shariati, Hajj

These trees and branches are part of us as we have each become part of this land. The water we have brought is our drinking water, the water that grows our gardens. We literally eat and drink the land. We pray that our homes and lives can be preserved as we struggle to learn, once again, how to integrate fire with this land, how to restore the balance that has been so lost. – Starhawk, The Earth Path

[Include also quotes on human-nature connection from Joanna Macy, Rachel Carson,, others?]

PREPARATIONS

This New Freedom Seder can be used by small groups of family and friends or by larger communal gatherings. In the latter case, it assumes there will be different tables of eight to ten people, with a combination of some readings that everyone hears and some discussion among the small groups at the different tables. It includes several different instructions for discussion and sharing among participants at the tables. In planning communal Seders, to manage time, it is best to choose one or two of these suggested discussions table discussions to focus on during the Seder.

If the text is longer than is possible for your family or communal Seder, use your own judgment about what to include or omit.

Before the Seder, invite everyone to bring a physical item that symbolizes their own sense of becoming free. They will be invited (not required) to explain to their table-mates the meaning of this item in their lives.

On each table there should be matzah (unleavened bread) and some other breads of the poor in different cultures; parsley or mint; a beet; a bitter herb like horseradish; an egg; some olives; an orange and charoset (a mixture of grape juice with chopped nuts, apples, and raisins with cinnamon and other sweet spices).

A Note on Blessings and the Name of God

The most mysterious and most intimate Name of God in Jewish tradition was written as four Hebrew letters that in Western transliteration are YHWH. This Name is especially closely connected with the liberation from Egypt, since it was revealed to Moses at the Burning Bush as the Name of God he could give to the Israelites in preparing them for their birth of freedom.

We do not know how the name was pronounced in Biblical days. The "YHWH" had no vowels. It certainly was not pronounced "Jehovah," and probably not "Yahweh."

When the letters on the scroll or book said YHWH, Jews have usually said aloud "Adonai," "my Lord," and most translations say "Lord." But this conveys a sense of God that is outside, above, dominating and not at all a sense of God as intimate, "in here," liberating. So in our generation some Jews have struggled toward a new way of understanding and translating YHWH.

Two aspects of the Name could help us understand it better. One is that these four letters draw on the letters for the past, present, and future of the verb "to be" so that this Name of God might mean "The One Who Was/Is/Will Be." Or they may represent the causative of the verb "to be": that is, "The One Who brings Being into being." Some translations have therefore used "The Eternal" or "Holy One of Being."

Another aspect of YHWH is that if we were to "pronounce" these four letters without any vowels — "Yyyyhhhhwwwwhhhh" — the pronunciation would be simply a breath. In this way, we not only mentally understand but bodily experience God as the One Who is the breath and gives the breath to us and to all life. What the trees breathe out, we breathe in; what we breathe out, the trees breathe in. As the Jewish prayer book says, "The breath of all that lives praises Your Name. "

Understanding the "YHWH" in this way means that it is truly universal – for the Breath exists in all languages and every life-form. Indeed, the breath in the sense of the balance of Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide and other gases in our atmosphere is exactly the aspect of our planet that is now most endangered, and its deformation most dangerous to all forms of life.

In accord with this aspect of the Name, we could simply pause to breathe whenever we come to YHWH, or we could translate it as "Breath of Life," or we could use as a substitute another of the ancient Names of God: "Yah," as in "Hallelu-yah," "Let us praise Yah."

This Haggadah prints this Name as YHWH. Readers may choose, therefore, how to say these letters. We would encourage readers to pause and breathe so as to have an inner sense of God within and all around them, God Who breathes into us the urge toward freedom.

Not only the Name of God but the form of blessing should be open, and can vary from one recitation to another, using heberew or not using it, perhaps adding not only English but other languages as well. Some possibilities: 
"Barukh atah Adonai elohenu melekh ha-olam .; Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe…" "Nivarekh et eyn-hachayyim ; We bless the Wellspring of Life " "We are thankful for the majesty of creation . . . " "We celebrate Life . . . " "We honor the breath, the sacred spirit…."

WE WALK THE PATH OF THE SEDER ITSELF —

** By meeting each other: In each table-group, people say their names and in one sentence, no more, explain why they have chosen to come to this Seder.

** By joining our voices:

[All sing:]

Circle 'round for freedom,
Circle 'round for peace;
For all of us imprisoned,
Circle for release.
Circle for the planet,
Circle for each soul;
For the children of our children,
Keep the circle whole.
— Linda Hirschhorn

** By creating light
[All say together:] We are the generation/That stands between the fires./Behind us is the flame and smoke/That rose from Auschwitz and from Hiroshima,/From the burning of our Towers/In jet fuel lit by rage,/ From the torching of our forests for the sake of fast hamburger; / Before us is the nightmare of a Flood of Fire: /The scorching of our planet/From a flood of greenhouse gases,/Or the blazing of our cities/In thermonuclear fire/Or the glare of gunfire/Exploding in our children. / It is our task to make from fire/Not an all-consuming blaze/But the light in which we see each other;/Each of us different,/All of us made in the image of God.

We light this fire to see more clearly/That the earth, the human race,/are not for burning./We light this fire to see more clearly/The rainbow in our many-colored faces.

Blessed are you, YHWH our God, Breathing Spirit of the Universe, who gives us light that we may become a light for peace and freedom and healing for all peoples and our planet.

Blessed are you, Yah, Breathing Spirit of the Universe, who has breathed life into us, lifted us up, and carried us to reach this moment.
[Light candles at each table.]

** By celebrating the earth and spring:
[Use a chant without words to keep energy focused as people pass around a basin to wash and dry the hands.] Take pieces of parsley or mint, dip them in salt water, pass them around the table, and say:
Blessed are you, YHWH our God, Breathing Spirit of the Universe, who creates the fruit of the earth.
Barukh atah YHWH elohenu ruakh ha-olam boray p'ri ha a-da-mah.
[Everyone then eats this piece of parsley. From here on, invite people to munch on carrots, celery, and other fruit or vegetables.]

[Someone speaks:] If we cannot take joy in the return of spring, how can we be happy in utopia? The Song of Songs brings us the springtime when flowers rise up against winter, the juices of love arise from the depths of depression, and the night-time of history gives way to the sunlight of Eden, the garden of delight:

Come with me, my love, come away,/For the long wet months are past,/The rains have fed the earth/And left it bright with blossoms./ Birds wing in the low sky,/Dove and songbird singing/In the open air above,/Earth nourishing tree and vine,/Green fig and tender grape,/Green and tender fragrance./Come with me, my love, come away.
[The reader passes a blossom from the flowers on the table — if possible on a living plant — to everyone. All sniff and look carefully at their flowers. All sing either verses in Hebrew from the Song of Songs, or the English song "Morning has Broken"] (Chorus) Do-di li va-a-ni lo Ha-ro-eh ba-sho-sha-nim (Repeat) Mi zot olah Min hamidbar Mi zat olah M'kituret mor Mor u-livonah Mor u-livonah (Chorus) Uri tzafon u-vo-i teyman Uri tzafon u-vo-i teyman (Chorus)

Morning Has Broken
Morning has broken like the first morning; Blackbird has spoken like the first bird. Praise for the singing! Praise for the morning! Praise for them springing fresh from the Word.
Sweet the rain's new fall sunlit from heaven, Like the first dew fall on the first grass. Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden, Sprung in completeness where Your feet pass.
Mine is the sunlight! Mine is the morning, Born of the one light Eden saw play! Praise with elation, praise every morning, God's recreation of the new day!

By breaking bread and setting it aside:
[Someone at each table: Break the middle matzah or other bread of the poor in two. Put the larger piece aside, leaving the smaller on the plate. Uncover the remaining piece of bread, lift up the dish and say:] This is the pressed-down bread of the oppressed that our forebears ate in the Tight and Narrow Land (Mitzrayim, Egypt, where the Israelites were enslaved), and this [lift up some other bread of the poor—tortilla, flatbread, etc.] is the bread of the oppressed today. Let all who are hungry eat, and all who are in need come and celebrate the Passover.
[Put the matzah and bread back, covered, on the plate. Then lift the larger piece and say the following.]

Why do we break this bread in two? Because if we hold on to the whole loaf for ourselves, it remains the bread of oppression. If we break it in order to share it, it becomes the bread of freedom.

In the world today, there are still some who are so pressed-down that they have not even this bread of oppression to eat. There are so many who are hungry that they cannot all come and eat with us tonight. Therefore we say to them, we set aside this bread as a reminder that we owe you justice and a share of the earth's fruitfulness, and that we will work to make the sharing real.

In the same way, if we human beings try to gobble up all the abundance of the world and leave nothing for the other forms of life to eat and breathe and drink, the abundance withers away into the death of many life-forms and despair for ourselves.

If we renew the earth's abundance for other life-forms besides ourselves, the earth will flourish and all beings will have enough to eat. Share your bread with the hungry, says YHWH, the Breath of Life.

This year we share in a world of greed and war, but we pledge to work during this coming year so that we can share and celebrate in a world at peace.

By Drinking the Fruit of the Grapevine
We will drink from four cups of grape juice to honor FOUR STAGES on the path of LIBERATION. These cups are (1) Becoming aware of oppression, (2) Opposing oppression, (3) Imagining alternatives, (4) Accepting personal and communal responsibility to act.

** First: the cup of awareness: learning to recognize the reality of oppression.
[Pour cups of grape juice.] [The youngest person present asks:]

Why is this night different from all other nights? On all the other nights we may eat either leavened or unleavened bread, but on this night only unleavened bread; on all the other nights we may eat any species of herbs, but on this night only bitter herbs; on all the other nights we do not dip even once, but on this night twice; on all the other nights we eat and drink either tense or relaxed, but on this night we all relax.
Mah nishtanah ha-lai-lah hazeh mi-kol ha-le-lot? She-b'khol ha-le-lot anu okh-lin chametz u-ma-tzah, ha-lai-lah ha-zeh kulo ma-tzah. She-b'khol ha-le-lot a-nu okh-lin sh'ar y'ra-kot, halai-lah ha-zeh ma-ror. She-b'khol ha-le-lot eyn anu mat-bilin a-fi-lu p-am a-chat, ha-lai-lah ha-zeh sh'tay f'a-mim. She-b 'khol ha-le-lot a-nu okh-lin beyn yosh-vin u-veyn m'su-bin, ha-lai-lah hazeh ku-la-nu m'su-bin.

All Sing:
B'chol Dor Vador "In Every Generation")
© Linda Hirschhorn

B'chol dor vador 4x
In every generation we relive a time
we fled out of a narrow place with freedom on our mind
B'chol …

We recall how we were dancing when we saw the waters part
how we stood as one at Sinai and felt that Godbeat in our heart
B'chol ..

Now we chant the ancient prayers even as we sing new songs
weave our future with the past keep the spirit in us strong
B'chol …

Sing of Miriam sing of Deborah sing of Emma sing of Szold
in every generation there's a story to be told
B'chol …

Our rejoicing is a mixture of the bitter and the sweet
until all live in freedom our journey's not complete
B'chol …

We must put an end to hunger hatred crime and war
in every generation that's what we're striving for

Oh yes in every generation we relive a time
we fled out of a narrow place with freedom on our mind

A young person asks; Why is this Seder different from all other Seders? In all other seders we tell the story of the liberation of human beings from oppression, from a Tight and Narrow Place. In this Seder we tell of the oppression of the earth itself and all its living beings.

An elder asks: Why is that we ask our children to ask these questions?

Someone says: : The answer to both these questions comes from the same teaching. For long ago the Prophet whose name was Malachi, "My Messenger" — God's Messenger –– taught: "Before the coming of the great and awesome day when YHWH, Yahh/ the Breath of Life, comes as a hurricane of danger, God will send us Elijah the Prophet, to turn the hearts of parents to children and the hearts of children to parents, lest the earth be utterly destroyed."

So tonight we seek to hear not only with our ears but with our hearts. We seek to hear our children ask us, and we seek to ask them, how to save the earth from the danger of destruction. And we set aside this final cup of grape juice so that when we drink it we become Elijah, turning our hearts to each other.

[Pour a special cup for Elijah, to set in the center of the table.]

Someone says: These are not the only questions we could ask.. Any question is a way in. And every question is an act of freedom. So let us ask new questions, our own questions, even if we do not yet know the answers.

[Members of the community in their separate table-groups ask questions arising from their own life-experience about freedom, food and hunger, environmental degradation and healing, work and jobs, homelessness, war, etc. The more concrete the better.]

[A reader responds:] All this we do because we were slaves to Pharaoh in the Tight and Narrow Space, and YHWH / Yahh our God, the Breath of Life Who is the Wind of Change, brought us forth from there with a mighty hand and an arm outstretched to sow us as seed into the world.

[Why Bitterness? —: Turning workers into slaves. Someone reads:]

So the Tight Place made the Godwrestlers subservient with crushing-labor; they embittered their lives with hard servitude in clay and in bricks and with all kinds of servitude in the field all their serfdom in which they made them subservient with crushing-labor. (Exodus 1: 13-14.)

"Look," one Nicaraguan free trade zone worker says, "Some people might say, 'What are you all complaining about? Wouldn't you rather work in a factory even if the conditions are bad and you don't get paid much, than to have no job at all?' No. At least for me, as a woman, I work. I support my family and I like working. But that doesn't mean that gives other people the right to come and we always have to say, yes, yes, yes, for everything, and we'll have to be beaten and hit, just like a dog when it gets hit and it just moves its tail and it comes back. No, were not going to do that. That's like slaves. That's past time. We came to the point where we said, Its enough. And that's why we formed the union."
— Source: National Public Radio, August 18, 2000.

[Why Leavened or unleavened? — simple or puffed-up. Someone reads:)

Traditionally, in preparation for Passover, we carefully rid our household of "chametz," leavened bread and similar foods. Chametz can also symbolize "puffed-up" pride, greed and jealousy. On Passover, we each eat the simple bread to cleanse our minds and lives of "puffed-upness," to spring-clean ourselves as well as our surroundings.
When we use coal and oil to warm ourselves, and let hot air blow out our doors and windows, that is "eating chametz," puffing ourselves up. When we drive an auto belching CO2 where we could bike or walk or share a train, that is "eating chametz," puffing ourselves up. When we burn fossil fuels because it is convenient and ignore that it is lethal, that is being addicted to chametz, even though it is killing human beings and large parts of our planet.

[Why tense or relaxed?]

[Someone speaks of how it feels to physically relax -- the connection of the loosened body to a sense of freedom.]

[Why dip twice? — first Into salt tears of Estrangement, then into the sweetness of Inclusion: ]

Said Pharaoh to his people: "Look, these foreigners, these strangers, these Godwrestlers, become more and mightier than we! Come now, let us use our wits against them, lest they become still more numerous, and then, if war occur, they be added to our enemies and make war upon us!" (Exodus 1: 9-10).

I have been working with a Colombian asylum detainee. The day she finally got out of INS jail, where she had been for nine months, she looked back at the windows of the jail to wave goodbye to the women she was leaving behind. They knew and she knew that the windows were too high for the inmates to see out of but they knew she would be able to see the windows from the street. So the women inside stood up on chairs and pressed their palms to the windows. We stood there in this miserable warehouse district of Queens looking at all these hands held high.
— Anne Pilsbury, attorney

[Someone reads:]

In the Bible's story of the Exodus, what are the plagues that resulted from Pharaoh’s oppression? And what are the plagues that result from the Pharaoh’s oppression today?

The plagues ruin the land and shatter its people. But they are not magical punishments upon the land or people rained down by a Super-Pharaoh in the sky. They are consequences of the Pharaoh's oppressive rule. They teach us: When rulers ignore human needs and destroy human lives, the earth itself writhes and rebels in agony.

The damage falls not on the powerful alone, but on us all. And so we pour from our glasses the juice of celebration, to affirm our grief at the sufferings of Mother Egypt.

We will recite THE PLAGUES of ancient story. We welcome you to call out the plague of today that for you echoes with the ancient warning:

[At each table, the group pauses after naming each plague, and the people drop grape-juice from the cup onto the plate. Have someone call out the next plague listed, and wait for communal response and the naming of other contemporary plagues. After this exploration, some invited speakers will name the ten most dangerous plagues of today.] — Water into Blood (Pollution & privatization of water; the flood that destroyed New Orleans)
— Frogs (Frogs — dead & maimed by chemicals)
— Vermin (Poverty)
— Beasts (Extinction of thousands of species)
— Mad cow disease
— Boils/Pestilence (Collapse of health system; disappearance of health insurance; asthma epidemic; environmental cancer; neglect of people with HIV and AIDS)
— Hail (Radical climate change, global scorching)
— Locusts (Famine, genetically modified foods, patented seeds)
— Endless night (Plague of blindness to each other, failure of empathy: no one can see us, we cannot see others. Prison system. Collapse of educational system—no "enlightenment." Electrical blackouts.)
— Slaying of the First-born (War, terrorism, torture, prisons, AIDS, gun-violence dead, especially children).
[Recite some of the names of children and adults killed in urban gun violence or dead of homelessness, those killed in the Twin Towers, in Iraq (both US soldiers and Iraqis), Israelis, Palestinians, AIDS] [Also recite names of some of those killed while struggling to make change happen: ] Martin Luther King, El-Hajj Al-Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X), John and Robert Kennedy, Oscar Romero, Medgar Evers, Chaney, Schwerner, & Goodman, Viola Liuzzo, Allison Krause, Orlando Letelier, Ronnie Karpen Moffitt, Harvey Milk, Barnett Slepian, Yitzhak Rabin, Anwar Sadat, John Africa and the MOVE family, Nizah Morris —
[and others named by those present]

Someone reads:
More than 2500 years ago, the Prophet Malachi spoke words that ring with danger and hope in the ears of our own generation: " A day is coming that will burn like an oven, turning to ashes all the arrogant. But for those who revere my Name, the Interbreathing of all life, there is a remedy: A sun of justice, righteousness, shall rise with healing in its wings, its rays. Here! Before the coming of the awesome day of Yahh, the Breath of Life, I will send you Elijah the Prophet to turn the hearts of the parents to the children and the hearts of the children to the parents, lest the earth be utterly destroyed."

From this ancient prophecy we today hear the danger of global scorching that may burn like a furnace not only the arrogant who have brought this danger on us but all the interwoven web of life on the earth; we hear the remedy of turning to solar and wind power ; we hear the need to bring the generations of humanity together to honor and heal the Breath of Life — the breathing of oxygen and carbon dioxide through which what we breathe in is what the trees breathe out; what the trees breathe in is what we breathe out.

This danger is the greatest plague we face. And these are the forms and the Pharaohs of the plagues that afflict us today:
:
INVITED SPEAKERS TALK ABOUT TEN PLAGUES OF TODAY: such as drought, intensifying hurricanes, coastal flooding, Himalayas' melt-off, etc
All recite: Barukh atah YHWH elohenu ruakh ha-olam boray p'ri hagafen. Blessed are You, the Interbreathing Breath of Life, Who creates the fruit of the vine.
[We drink from the first cup, the cup of awareness.]**
Pour the Second cup: resistance to oppression
[Read:] In every generation, a Pharaoh rises up to enslave us. In every generation, every human being must seek to free the community anew.
[All join in singing:] When Israel was in Egypt's land, Let my people go; Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my people go!
(Chorus:) Go down, Moses, 'Way down in Egypt's land; Tell ol' Pharaoh, Let my people go!
Thus says the Lord, bold Moses said, Let my people go; If not I'll smite your first-born dead; Let my people go! Chorus)
No more shall they in bondage toil, Let my people go; Let them come out with Egypt's spoil, Let my people go! (Chorus)
We need not always weep and mourn, Let my people go; And wear these slav'ry chains forlorn, Let my people go! (Chorus)
The devil thought he had us fast, Let my people go; But we thought we'd break his chains at last, Let my people go! (Chorus)

Pour the cup of grape juice. (Someone different reads each passage:)

Now the king of Egypt said to the midwives of the Hebrews — the name of one was Shifrah, the name of the second Puah — "When you help the Hebrew women give birth, if he be a son, put him to death; but if she be a daughter, she may live." But the midwives held God in awe, and they did not do as the king had spoken to them, they let the children live. God dealt well with the midwives. (Exodus 1: 16-21).

"When I dare to be powerful — to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." — Audre Lorde

I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today my own government. (Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967)

Fannie Lou Hamer, leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, when the President of the United States offered the MFDP two symbolic seats at the Democratic National Convention instead of recognizing the whole MFDP as the legitimate delegation: "We didn't come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired."

[Resistance to oppression of workers and the poor:]

"God came into the picture. What was the sign that God had come? It was a bush that burned and burned and did not stop burning. Moses had had a fire kindled in his heart once, but it went out, or at least died down. God is the Being whose heart does not stop burning, in whom the flame does not die down.
"What was God all burned up about? The voice that came out of the bush said, 'I have seen the affliction of my people that are in Egypt and have heard their cry by reason of their oppressors."'

."And the proof that God had entered into Moses, and that Moses had really been 'converted,' was that he had to go back and identify himself with his enslaved people 'organize them into Brickmakers' Union Number One' and lead them out of hunger and slavery into freedom and into 'a good land, and a large, a land flowing with milk and honey."' (A. J. Muste , 1943).

"A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."
– Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967

[Resistance to war and militarism]

"Pharaoh’s heart and that of his servants changed regarding the people. They said, What have we done, sending free the Godwrestlers from serving us? So the king of Narrowness/ Mitzrayyim had his chariot harnessed, his soldiers he took with him, and he took six hundred selected chariots, every sort of Egyptian war-chariot. The Egyptians pursued the Godwrestlers and overtook them encamped by the sea, all of Pharaohs chariot-horses, his riders, and his army. YHWH caused the sea to go back with a fierce east wind all night, and the Godwrestlers came through the midst of the sea upon the dry land. But YHWH shook the Egyptians in the midst of the sea. The waters returned, they covered the chariots and the riders of all Pharaohs army, not even one of them remained." (Exodus 14: 5-9, 27-28)

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
– Martin Luther King, April 4, 1967

Resistance to the destructions of the earth: [James Hansen's words in Uppsala on CD against coal. OR something from March 2 event] CHECK***

[Sing newer anti-oppression songs]

I NEVER WAS
©Linda Hirschhorn 2009 (Inspired by Pastor Martin Niemoller)

First they came for the Communists
I stood by silently
I never was a Communist
What did it matter to me

What did it matter (3) to me

Then they came for the Union Men
and I stood silently
I never was a Union Man
What did it matter to me

What did it matter (3) to me

Cry out cry out its still going on today
your neighbor is an Immigrant
they’re coming to take him away

And when they came for Gays and Jews
I just closed my eyes
I wasn’t Gay and I wasn’t a Jew
so I stood silently by

What did it matter
how could it matter
why should it matter to me

Cry out cry out its still going on today
your neighbor is a Muslim
they’re coming to take her away

And now I hear they’re coming soon
they’re coming soon for me
there’s no one left who might cry out
cry out to set me free

No one of us is truly safe until we all are free
no one of us can truly say it matters not to me
Cry out cry out its still going on today
who is your next door neighbor
why have they gone away

[All say together:]

Barukh atah YHWH elohenu ruakh ha-olam boray p'ri hagafen. Blessed are You, Whose interwoven Breath of Life breathes forth the fruit of the vine.

[We drink from the second cup, the cup of resistance.]

** Third cup: Creativity: envisioning the new world.
[Pour Miriam's Cup, a cup of water because waters birth new possibility. Someone reads:] As a child, Miriam reached out to Pharaoh's daughter to save the life of her baby brother Moses; together they crossed boundaries of class and race and nation to give a new birth to freedom. As a grown woman, she led the women in rejoicing as the Red Sea waters broke and the birthing went forward. She had the courage to rebuke Moses; and she called forth the well of water that nourished the runaway slaves in the wilderness.

Miriam: The Red Sea

High above shores and times,
I on the shore
forever and ever.
Moses my brother
has crossed over to milk, honey,
that holy land.
Building Jerusalem.
I sing forever on the seashore.
I do remember
horseman and horses,
waves of passage
poured into war,
all poured into journey.
My unseen brothers
have gone over,
chariots deep seas under.
I alone stand here
ankle-deep
and I sing, I sing,
until the lands
sing to each other.
—Muriel Rukeyser

Symbols of transformation, old & new

[Someone says/does each of the following. One participant lifts up the matzah, showing it to the celebrants, and says:]

Why do we eat this flat, unleavened matzah? Because the decision to act came upon our forebears so quickly that their dough had not yet risen when You, the Breath of Life, bore them to freedom through a hurricane of transformation.

[All say:]

Blessed are You, Yah, Breath of Life, who makes us holy by connecting us with all of life, and has breathed into us the wisdom to transform this unleavened, pressed-down bread of the poor into the bread of liberation.

Barukh atah YHWH elohenu ruakh ha-olam asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav vitzivanu al akhilat matzah."

Participant lifts up the bitter herbs, showing them to the celebrants. These bitter herbs we eat, what is the reason for them? Because being forced into tight and narrow places cramps the abundance and creativity of all of life and makes life bitter.

[All say:]

Blessed are You, YHWH our God, Breathing Spirit of the universe, who makes us holy by connecting us to the eating of herbs so bitter they take away our breath.

Barukh atah YHWH elohenu ruakh ha-olam asher kidshanu b'mitzvotav vitzivanu al akhilat maror.

[All eat the bitter herb.]

Why this charoset? Because charoset embodies the Song of Songs, bringing nuts and raisins, apricots and apples, spice and juices, into a joyful celebration of the earth and springtime and each other.

Why this egg? — Because the springtime is a time of rebirth, when we can bring new possibility, new freedom, into our lives.

Why this olive? Because for millennia the olive branch has been the symbol of peace, and we seek to make peace where there has been war.

Why this orange? Because in olden days there was no orange on the Seder Plate and it was said that outsiders — gay men and lesbians, transgendered people, converts, those who lack some important ability or skill, the unlearned — all these no more belonged in the community than an orange belongs upon the Seder plate. So we place an orange to say firmly, All these belong in our communities.

[Someone reads:]

The power that flows upwards from the consent, support, and nonviolent activity of the people is not the same power that flows downward from the state by virtue of its command of the instruments of force, and yet the two kinds of power contend in the same world for the upper hand.

The prosperous and mighty of our day still live at a dizzying height above the wretched of the earth, yet the latter have made their will felt in ways that have already changed history, and can change it more.

Their cooperative power has as its chief instrument direct action, both noncooperative and constructive. This power can be spiritual in inspiration but doesn't have to be. Its watchwords are love and freedom, yet it is not just an ideal but a real force in the world.

It must now be brought to bear on the choice between survival and annihilation. Whether combined with violence, as in peoples war, sustained by a constitution, as in democracy, or standing alone, as in satyagraha or living in truth, it is becoming the final arbiter of the public affairs of our time and the political bedrock of our unconquerable world.

— Jonathan Schell, The Unconquerable World

[Before the Seder, invite everyone to bring a physical item that symbolizes their own sense of becoming free. Put these also on the table; each person explains it.]

[All sing either:]

And every one 'neath vine and figtree
Shall live in peace and unafraid (Repeat)
And into plowshares beat their swords
Nations shall learn war no more (Repeat)

or "Solidarity Forever":)

Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
Solidarity forever,
For the movement makes us strong.
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,
Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousand fold,
We shall bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old,
For the movement makes us strong.
[All say together:]


Nivarekh et eyn-hachayyim sheh hakol niihyeh bdvarah. We bless You, Wellspring of Life, through Whose flowing all is created.

[We drink the Cup of Miriam.]

[**Fourth cup: Responsibility and action]

[Pour the cup. Someone reads:]

In a free society, some are guilty. But all are responsible.

— Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1944; 1964.

INVITED SPEAKERS set forth Ten Healings that we ourselves must bring to heal the birth from the Plagues we have discerned. Someone reads:

All are responsible. Yet we are not all alike. Having heard some teaching about the Ten Healings now needed, we turn to each other, face to face, to ask ourselves: What can we do? What will we do? What can each one of us offer so that together we can reweave the flow of life?

At our tables, year by year, we meet four people —
One who seeks wisdom in the teachings of the past.
One who rebels, seeking new knowledge from a time of transformation.
One who seeks truth through simplicity of heart.
One who does not relate by asking but remains open, waiting to be filled with experience.
Which are you? What will you bring?

[At each table, invite and wait for discussion on what people are prepared to do.}

{After discussion, all sing:]

Go tell it on the mountain, Over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain/To let my people go!/Who are the people dressed in white?/Let my people go!/Must be the children of the Israelite/ Let my people go!/Who are the people dressed in red?/Let my people go!/Must be the people that Moses led./Let my people go!/Who are the people dressed in black?/Let my people go!/Must be the hypocrites a-turning back./Let my people go!

THE NIGHT (Quran, Sura 92)
In the Name of God the Compassionate the Caring
By the night when it falls
By the day when it breaks
By what has made the male and the female
You strive toward different ends.

As for him who shares what he has and is mindful
who affirms the right –
him we will ease to the good life

As for him who hoards what he has
thinking it makes him secure
who denies the right –
him we will ease to hardship
Wealth will not save him from ruin

Ours is guidance
Ours is the after and ours is the before

I warn you of a fire that sears
One hard in wrong will burn there
a denier, one who turns away

We will spare from it
Whoever keeps the faith
Who shares what he owns, making it pure
Who looks to no one to return the favor
Seeking only the face of his lord most high
That one will know peace of mind

PRAYER FOR THE GREAT TURNING

May the turning of the Earth save us.
May the turning of the seasons & the turning of the leaves save us.
May we be saved by the worms, the beetles & the microbes turning the soil.
May we be saved by the turning of vegetation into compost
& the turning of compost into rich soil.
May the turning of seeds into plants & the turning of flowers
into fruits save us.
May the grasses & weeds, the vines & mosses all conspire to save us.
May we be saved by the turning of sprouts into saplings, of saplings into trees,
& the trees into forests.
May the scurrying, foraging, pouncing & lumbering of the animals save us.

May the breath of heaven in the breezes & the stormy winds save us.
May the dance of the butterflies, & the musical flight & return
of the birds save us.
May we be saved by vapors turning into clouds & by the turning of
the ever-changing clouds into rain.
May the waters flowing from springs into the lakes save us.
May the streams flowing into rivers, the rivers into seas,
& the great heaving of the oceans save us.
May we be saved by the patient turning of the rocks, the hills,
the mountains, & the volcanoes.
May the metabolism of the climates of the Earth save us.
May the turnings of all Beings great & small move us to find wisdom in our own turnings.

May we be saved by our waking & sleeping, by the rhythms of our blood
& our appetites, by the cycles of birthing & nurturing, injury & healing,
mating & nesting, loss & discovery, joy & mourning.
May we find in time the grace to turn to one another, & may this turning
also become our salvation.
May we learn to benefit the life of Earth with peace, humble in our needs,
& generous in our giving.
May we learn to celebrate the abundance of life with gratitude, & to embrace
the Earth with our bodies in return.

– Joanne Sunshower

[Raise the cup. All sing or recite Dayenu:]

Had You taken us out of slavery,
but not torn the Sea apart for us,
it would have been enough for us!

Had You brought us through it dry,
but not sunk our oppressors in its midst,
it would have been enough for us!

Had You sunk our oppressors in its midst,
but not freely fed us manna,
it would have been enough for us!

Had You freely fed us manna,
but not rested us with Shabbat,
it would have been enough for us!

Had You rested us with Shabbat,
but not given us the Teaching,
it would have been enough for us!

I-lu ho-tzi ho-tzi-a-nu,
ho-tzi-anu mi-mitz-ra-yim,
ho-tzi-a-nu mi-mitz-rayim dai-ye-nu.

DAI-DAI-YE-NU, DAI-DAI-YE-NU, DAI-DAI-YE-NU, Dayenu, dayenu!

I-lu na-tan na-tan la-nu,
na-tan la-nu et ha-sha-bat,
na-tan la-nu et ha-sha-bat,
dai-ye-nu.

DAI-DAI-YE-NU, DAI-DAI-YE-NU, DAI-DAI-YE-NU,
Dayenu, dayenu!

[Someone says:]

What does this mean, "It would have been enough"? Surely no one of these alone would indeed have been enough for us.

It means to celebrate each step toward freedom as if it were enough, then to start out on the next step.

It means that if we reject each step because it is not the whole liberation, we will never be able to achieve the whole liberation.

It means to sing each verse as if it were the whole song and then sing the next verse!
[All read:]

How many and how hard are the tasks the Redeemer has set before us!

If we were to free the peoples of the world,
but not to beat the swords of every nation into plowshares,
it would not be enough for us.

If we were to beat the swords of every nation into plowshares,
but not to share our food and end all hunger,
it would not be enough for us.

If we were to share our food and end all hunger,
but not to cleanse our earth and air of poison,
it would not be enough for us.

If we were to cleanse our earth and air of poison,
but not to turn to wind and sun for energy,
it would not be enough for us.

If we were to turn to wind and sun for energy,
But not to set aside some time for love and laughter,
it would not be enough for us

Then how great, doubled and redoubled, are the claims the Redeemer makes upon our effort!
You call us to struggle, work, share, give, think, plan, organize, sit-in, speak out, dream, hope, and pray for the great Redemption:
to end the oppression of all peoples,
to prevent the extinction of a million species,
to shape a planet joyful in our shared abundance,
to turn to wind and sun for energy,
and to set aside some time for love and laughter,
All these!

[Someone reads:] Before entering … the Hajj {Pilgrimage to Mecca], which is the beginning of a great change and revolution, you must declare your intention. It is the intention of a "transferral" from your house to the house of people, from life to love, from the self to Allah, from slavery to freedom, from racial discrimination to equality, sincerity and truth, from being clothed to being naked, from a daily life to an eternal life and from selfishness and aimlessness to devotion and responsibility.
— Ali Shariati, Hajj

One of the most powerful, and deeply spiritual, ways to work for social change is for us to take action in the present that embodies — right now! — the future vision that we seek.
Forty years ago, the sit-in movement had a vision of the future: integrated restaurants. The sit-ins did not beg legislators to change the law. They did not attack the restaurant-owners. They went, Black and white together, to integrate them.
What happened next was up to the owners and the police. They could accept integration, they could beat people up, they could put them in jail, they could kill them, they could change the law. They did all those things, but mostly, ultimately, people changed the law.

The vision of new possibility was not left in the hands of visionaries, for it was embodied in defiant love. It made real the spiritual teaching that the means and the ends are indivisible, for it made the ends themselves into the means, not in a far-off future but in Now.
And it gave actual faces to the "issue." It was no longer a matter of courts and law books but of real live students, restaurant-owners, waitresses, police.
So the public responded. The sit-ins seeded a fruitful American politics that is still nourishing us, even in days of Imperial War and Insatiable Wealth.
— Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow

[All sing:] O Freedom! O Freedom! O Freedom over me!
And before I'd be a slave I'd be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free!
No more killing…No more hunger …No more pollution…, etc.

[Someone says:] We join at the time of Passover to connect our separate stories in the telling of new freedom. Our telling cannot end tonight. We must name and number the different tribes to carry on the journey. We have a wilderness of change to cross before we can enter a new time of greater justice, greater freedom, greater peace, and deeper healing.
To begin this process, on this very night we will exchange our addresses and we will talk about the actions we feel drawn to take.
[Hand around a paper for name, organization, address, phone. Email. One person might start the process by suggesting an action. Allow time for conversation.]

{At each table, someone pours juice from the Cup of Elijah, sitting untasted in the center of the table, into each person's glass. All say together:] I take responsibility to become the Prophet Elijah, "turning the hearts of the parents to the children and the hearts of the children to the parents, lest the earth be utterly destroyed."

Barukh atah YHWH elohenu ruakh ha-olam boray p'ri eytz. Blessed are You, YHWH our God, Who creates the fruit of the vine.
{All drink the fourth cup, the cup of personal and communal commitment to action.] "God has allowed me to go up to the mountain.
And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land.
I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight
that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.

— Dr. Martin Luther King, April 3,1968, the night before his death.

[All sing:]

Circle 'round for freedom,
Circle 'round for peace;
For all of us imprisoned,
Circle for release.
Circle for the planet,
Circle for each soul;
For the children of our children,
Keep the circle whole.
— Linda Hirschhorn / Rob Glover

BY EATING
[If there is a full-scale meal at this New Freedom Seder, it is eaten now. At the end of the meal the children are invited to hunt for the Afikoman (the piece of matzah that was hidden earlier) and it is redeemed from the children who have found it, since it is necessary to have this taste of matzah as the last taste at the end of the meal. One way of redeeming it is to ask the children to name an organization that is working for social justice, freedom, peace, or healing of the earth, and the adults agree to contribute to that group in accordance with their own means.] [The Afikoman is distributed among the Seder company, and every one eats a bite of it.] [There are many different traditions of songs to sing, praising the Breath of Life Who brings freedom and justice to birth.)

BY PRAISING [Read together:]

All living are one and holy, let us remember
as we eat, as we work, as we walk and drive.
All living are one and holy, we must make ourselves worthy
We must act out justice and mercy and healing
as the sun rises and as the sun sets,
as the moon rises and the stars wheel above us:
we must repair goodness.
We must praise the power of the one that joins us.
Whether we plunge in or thrust ourselves far out
finally we reach the face of glory too bright
for our eyes and yet we burn and we give light.
We will try to be holy,
we will try to repair the world given to us to hand on.
Precious is this treasure of words and knowledge and deeds
that moves inside us. Holy is the hand that works for peace and for justice,
holy is the mouth that speaks for goodness
holy is the foot that walks toward mercy.
Let us lift each other on our shoulders and carry each other along.
Let holiness move in us. Let us pay attention to its small voice.
Let us see the light in others and honor that light.
Remember the dead who paid our way here dearly, dearly
and remember the unborn for whom we build our houses.
Praise the light that shines before us, through us, after us. Amein.
— Marge Piercy, from Amidah
—
OR

[Sing this translation of psalm 149 to the tune of "Michael Row the Boat Ashore."] Praise Yah in the heavens, halleluyah.
Praise God in the heights, halleluyah.
Praise God, all you angels, halleluyah.
Praise Yah, all you hosts, halleluyah.
Praise God, sun and moon, halleluyah.
Praise Yah, you stars of light, halleluyah.
Praise God, you high heavens, halleluyah.
All that flows in all the world, halleluyah.

Let them all praise God's Name, halleluyah.
For God spoke and they appeared, halleluyah.
With God they take their stand, halleluyah.
God's rhythm none can break, halleluyah.
Praise Yah from the earth, halleluyah.
You sea-monsters and all deeps, halleluyah.
Fire, hail, snow, and steam, halleluyah.
Stormy wind to do God's word, halleluyah.
Mountains high and small hills, halleluyah.
Trees of fruit and cedars too, halleluyah.
Wild beasts and quiet flocks, halleluyah.
Creeping things and winged birds, halleluyah.
Leaders and officials, halleluyah.
Societies and peoples, halleluyah.
Young men and women, too, halleluyah.
Let us praise the holy Name, halleluyah.
For God's Name includes us all, halleluyah.
God's radiance shines out, halleluyah.
And God lifts the people's hearts, halleluyah.
For all who wrestle God, halleluyah.
For all who bring God close, halleluyah.

[Thanks to the Board of the Nathan Cummings Foundation and to myriad friends and members of The Shalom Center for their gifts and grants that are making the Freedom Seder for the Earth possible. And thanks to Avi Katz, who did the amazing "Globe of Matzah," illustration, for his extraordinary vision –-- as much prophetic as it is artistic. What does it mean to see our planet made of the "bread of the poor" that can –-- if we will it –-- become the bread of freedom? And if you look carefully, are there cracks in the matzah-continents themselves as our planet quakes and strains? Avi Katz' body of work is at http://www.avikatz.net ] ]]> https://beta.jewcology.com/resources/new-interfaith-freedom-seder-for-the-earth-text-of-an-earth-haggadah/feed/ 0 https://beta.jewcology.com/resources/green-cleaning-recipes/ https://beta.jewcology.com/resources/green-cleaning-recipes/#comments Wed, 24 Nov 2010 11:33:54 +0000 http://jewcology.org/resource/green-cleaning-recipes/ Find recipes for green cleaning products at Canfei Nesharim.org.

Pesach. The holiday of our freedom! Too often it becomes the holiday of our environmental degradation, beginning with toxic cleaning supplies and ending with bags full of plastic and aluminum trash. Below are some basic tips covering a few of the many ways to reduce the personal stress and environmental impact often associated with Passover, while celebrating a happy and kosher holiday.

Personal Stress Reduction:
I would like to echo the statement of many, many Rabbanim and state that Passover cleaning is much less intensive than spring cleaning. For spring cleaning, one might clean the top of a six foot bookshelf and wipe around light fixtures, but even the most stringent guidelines do not require this level of cleanliness for Passover. Women (and men) should NOT drive themselves crazy cleaning for Passover. This cleaning anxiety inspires the wrong kind of dread for the holiday and is not required by Jewish law. Furthermore, cleaning significantly raises the environmental impact of Passover, due to the many harsh chemicals used in the cleaning process.

Cleaning:
Remember that many everyday cleaners contain harsh chemicals that are destructive to the environment, and toxic to us. Some chemicals cause only temporary irritation, while others have long lasting affects on the nervous system, and are especially dangerous for young children. For sources of safer, easier, and cheaper alternatives made from everyday household items, see "Detoxify Your Home" from COEJL.

Buy eco-friendly cleaning products from Canfei Nesharim

Covering:
Each Passover, many reams of aluminum foil are wasted attempting to cover counters, shelves. While aluminum may be necessary in very limited areas such as sinks and range tops that cannot be kashered, easier and more environmentally friendly alternatives are available for the remaining areas. For example: local kitchen re-decorating stores can cut attractive pieces of linoleum to fit counter tops that are simple to tape down and remove, easy to wipe clean during the holiday, and effortless to store. (My mother has done this for 10 years and it's really easy.) similarly, thick plastic can be cut and reused for appropriate surface areas. Ultimately, fitted linoleum pieces or plastic sheets become an environmental and economical method of covering large surfaces.

Liberate yourself!
Pesach inherently requires us to increase our consumption by cleaning our homes, covering surface area, and changing our dishes. However, there are simple and effective methods for us to ensure a more religiously meaningful and environmentally friendly holiday.

WISHING EVERYONE A CHAG KASHER v' SAMEACH, AND AN ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY HOLIDAY!!

Originally posted in "On Eagles' Wings" April 5th 2006

This content originated at Canfei Nesharim.org.

Canfei Nesharim suggests that you organize a “Clean Sweep” program in your Jewish community to help people reduce waste during pre-holiday cleaning. Many items that would normally end up in a landfill during the pre-Pesach cleaning frenzy can actually be reused or recycled. There are many companies and organizations that collect and then reuse or refurbish these items. This program can actually help charitable organizations or even make money for your synagogue with your community’s collective trash!

All you have to do is:

• decide which items you want to collect from the list below,
• choose a convenient drop-off site,
• publicize the program, and
• have volunteers deliver (or mail) the collected items to the recipients.

One suggestion: Do not collect any very large or hazardous waste—leave that dangerous job to the professionals!

See one community’s Clean Sweep Flier

Suggested Items to Collect and Organizations That Accept Them:

1. Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs

-Home Depot

-IKEA

2. Single-Use Batteries

-My Organic Market (D.C. area only)

– BatteryRecycling.com (mail-in program for a fee)

-Type in your zip code at Earth911.com to find a local place that accepts batteries

3. Cellular Phones

-Jewish Coalition Against Domestic Abuse (http://jcada.org/www/docs/5)

-PlanetGreenRecycle.com (will pay for collected phones)

-Check your local U.S. Post Office for free postage-paid “Mail Back” envelopes

4. Inkjet Cartridges

-PlanetGreenRecycle.com (will pay for collected cartridges)

-Check your local U.S. Post Office for free postage-paid “Mail Back” envelopes

-Office Depot

-Staples

5. Plastic Bags

-Whole Foods

-Check your local grocery store to see if they have a drop-off station

6. Toner/Laser Cartridges

-PlanetGreenRecycle.com (will pay for collected cartridges)

-Staples

-Office Depot

7. Electronic Devices: PDAs, Blackberries, Digital Cameras, iPods, MP3 Players, and Computer Items

-Check your local U.S. Postal Office for free postage-paid “Mail Back” envelopes

-Staples

-Office Depot

8. Metal Clothes Hangers

-Check to see if your local dry cleaner accepts used hangers

-Type in your zip code at Earth911.com to find a local place that accepts hangers

9. Clothing, Toys, Baby Products, and House ware Items

-Contact your local Jewish Federation, Jewish Social Service Agency or other community organization to find a local place (or gemach) that accepts these items to donate to needy families.

10. Rechargeable Batteries

-Staples

-Office Depot

Contact your local store to find out if they accept items at that particular location.

Check out Earth911.com to find local places to drop off many more recyclable items.

Happy Collecting and Chag Pesach Sameach!

Many thanks to Stephanie Frumkin for preparing these resources.

This content originated at Canfei Nesharim.org.