After poring over several new hagaddot on the Internet this morning I finally decided to stop looking or I would never get finished with this year's cut-and-paste version.
Over the next week, I'm going to be posting more of the interesting pieces I have found:
Several haggadah-writers are taken with the fact that, this year, it is the Egyptians who are most famously in the process of being liberated. The fact that the Hebrew word for Egypt -- mitzrayim -- also means "a narrow place" works on many different levels. This year, even more so.
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Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, the "Velveteen Rabbi,"has published a 7th revised version of her wonderful Passover Haggadah that includes a poem about this year's remarkable events in the Middle East -- in particular, how different faith communities protected each other at prayer:
Freedom
Liberation comes when people gather by the tens
and by the thousands
demanding that the despot who's held the reins step down,
and in between the slogans
they dish out lentils cooked over open flame,
and homes open up so the protestors can shower
and members of one faith link hands
to protect members of another faith at prayer.
I'll be sharing a few more pieces from the VR haggadah in my next diaries.
Poet Esther Cohen has written "The Unhaggadah: a Prayer for Egypt." It came as a Passover insert that was part of my subscription to Jewish Currents, a Secular Jewish magazine. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be online. I liked this part:
This year
not like any other
January 25 Egyptians all of them really all
beautiful old women, soldiers,
children, religious people
they found one another in the square
and moved toward the Egypt who knows not Pharaoh
and the life that becomes better
because of the way we are together
I want to tell
the courage of the Egyptians
passing over their corruption
with all of us watching
knowing
the way we all do
how possible Exodus can be
Jewish Voice for Peace has published a
haggadah that focuses primarily on Israel/Palestine but also includes this on Egypt from Rabbi Alissa Wise, JVP national organizer:
In the wake of the revolutions throughout the Arab World, and particularly in Egypt, I want to acknowledge the distinction between “mitzrayim”- the narrow place- where the story we tell at Passover takes place and Egypt, the modern-day nation state. Since 2001, I have in my own personal seders been clear to make that distinction, to not conflate contemporary Egyptians with the pharaoh and taskmasters that appear in the Passover story. In the U.S., and worldwide, anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia saturate our media and our culture, and we must be vigilant to oppose it and interrupt it at every turn. This is still true this year, even as when I watched the events in Tahrir Square I couldn't help but think of Mosesʼ plea to “let my people go.”
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