chag sameach

Happy Pesach/Passover, everyone!

I am thinking warmly of the seder that Sim presided over last year at St. Antony's, with her South African "social justice Haggadah" (being recited again tonight in Saskatoon, no doubt) and and the massive quantities of haroset and matzah ball soup (for which she commandeered the kitchen for the better part of two days), and many, many friends. It was a very Antonian celebration (there were people from about 6-7 countries, including Jews, Muslims, and Christians--observant or otherwise--and we all took part in the reading) on a beautiful spring day, when any number of us there were in the process of slowly walking out of our own periods of captivity.

I can't find my copy of Sim's seder, but the Velveteen Rabbi has a lovely, poetry-rich one here, which I've been looking through through all evening. I've had a rough couple of days, and reading it has calmed my fractious mind a little. It includes an excerpt from Judy Chicago's "Merger Poem," which has been part of the liturgy at my mother's church for many years. And this, 'adapted from Michael Welzer':

...we still believe what we were taught
before we ever stood at Sinai's foot:

that wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt
that there is a better place, a promised land
that the winding way to that promise passes through wilderness

that there is no way to get from here to there
except by joining hands, marching
together.