RJ Blog

Each year, as the grocery stores begin to display their Pesach foods, I, without fail, think to myself “Passover time already?!” Each year, we are commanded to “regard ourselves as if we ourselves went forth from the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 13:8) so that we can feel how sweet freedom is.

Coming to camp has many parallels with the Exodus story. When campers get ready for that first summer at camp, they are leaving everything they know; they are leaving home for an unknown land; they have to have faith that it will all work out in the end. (And, no, I’m not saying that our lives at home are Egypt or that parents are enslaving their kids… it’s an imperfect metaphor, but still one that is valuable.)

Each year during Passover tradition tells us to rid our houses of chametz (items that are not Kosher for Passover) and stock up on Kosher for Passover foods like macaroons, fruits and vegetables, and of course matzah. We all know that matzah can be purchased by the box or case, but did you know that you can actually make your own matzah?

This post is part of our Passover series, in which we think about the application of our age-old Passover story and traditions to the crucial issues we face today. For ways to infuse your seder with social justice, see our holiday guide. When 30,000 Americans die each year due to gun violence, it is time to acknowledge that we are suffering from a modern plague. When schoolchildren are gunned down by single shooter with a high-capacity magazine, we suffer from a modern plague. And, when criminals can buy weapons without having their backgrounds checked, we suffer from a modern plague. As [...]

by Lisa Chinsky Passover is super early this year. (I know, I know, it’s always either late or early, but never “on time.”) The first night is March 25! No, that’s not a typo; the first seder is Monday, March 25! I started to think about what that means in our house and to our family, and I realized that it doesn’t really matter when it is because we already know what we are going to do. Every year, we do the same thing. We eat matzah. We dip parsley in salt water. We ask the four questions. We make [...]

  Torah says seven Diaspora Jews do eight Is it still Pesach?   The Torah commands us (Exodus 12:15) to eat matzah for seven days of the Passover Festival. That is generally the practice in Israel and for Reform Jews.

Every seder is a memory-making moment. Friends and family gather to read from the Haggadah, to eat matzah and drink wine. At our seders, we are a real “by the book” kind of family when retelling the story of the Israelites’ redemption from slavery and exodus from Egypt. Of course, my children will add a few words about a lesson learned in school or sing a new tune to an old song, but so many homes also add a contemporary twist to the seder text to raise awareness of a particular plight of a group of people – women’s rights, [...]

By The iWorship Listserv Community As the agent provocateur on the iWorship listserv, Larry Kaufman posed a question to his colleagues on Passover Sunday: “How many of you, in this one-day-yom tov Reform movement, participated in a second seder?” He did not ask his usual follow-up question (“If you did, what was your reason, as a Reform Jew, for doing so?), but many of the list-mates supplied reasons anyway, along with a variety of interesting perspectives on seder observance. Though we can’t draw any reliable statistical inferences from the information collected, we’re interpreting the data to suggest three main reasons [...]

Every year around this season in Israel, there is an awareness that our lives shift during the holiday of Passover. The changing surroundings of spring’s arrival are the first indication of the holiday, as we’re directed to celebrate Passover during the spring. Then, there is also a sense of folk participation in the holiday spirit: you can smell the detergent fumes in the air as households thoroughly clean their homes; the stores are filled with kosher le’Pesach foodstuffs (and products you wouldn’t even dare putting in your mouth, such as bleach!) for the many shoppers of the season; and the [...]

Ask anyone in humanitarian aid circles what is the most useful tool for fundraising and the answer will almost always be “the camera.” Whether or not it is possible to raise funds without taking photos of people in often desperate situations is the question that now rocks the Israeli NGO community. Moshe Kahlon, Israel’s Minister of Welfare, announced that his ministry will no longer support NGOs who distribute food in public allocation centers where photographs are taken. He said recently on the radio, “It robs people of their basic dignity, and I won’t have it.” The NGOs, in response, are [...]

I’ve purposely waited until the Haggadot have been put away for the year to comment on issues that emerged in the discussion of the highly touted New American Haggadah (NEH) produced for Pesach 5772 by the wunderkinder editor Jonathan Safran Foer and translator Nathan Englander. I have seen NEH, which is not truly a new Haggadah, but a new presentation of the inherited liturgy; however, I haven’t actually studied it.  The blogosphere analyses and dissections were enough to put me back on my soapbox about translation of classic texts. Leaving aside some “notice me, notice me” eccentricities in Englander’s English [...]

I did not grow up in a kosher home. In fact, I refer to the home in which I was raised as “glatt treiff.”  My becoming a bar mitzvah in 1973 coincided with my mother’s personal liberation.  A few months after I became a bar mitzvah, my mother returned to work and the kitchen closed forever.  It re-opened, however, once a year, for one week:  Passover.  We did not change dishes, but it was the occasion for a major spring cleaning.  My father and I would make the long trip by subway down to the Lower East Side.  We would [...]

Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Fe, NM and Yedid Nefesh in Carmiel, Israel have formed a twinning relationship this year through ARZA.  They are coming up with some very creative ways to get to know each other and to form a Mifgash or connection.  Their Pesach project provides all of us with a window on the practice and meaning of Passover in Israel today.  They have shared their project with us so we can invite all of you to be part of their journey.  The project is not done yet, but they have taken the first steps.

President Barack Obama issued a video message yesterday conveying his Passover greetings to the Jewish community. Jarrod Bernstein, Director of Jewish Outreach at the White House, posted the video on The White House Blog with the following preface: Starting tomorrow night, the Jewish community in the United States, Israel, and throughout the world will come together to celebrate the holiday of Passover. President and Mrs. Obama will join them, continuing their tradition of hosting a small Seder at the White House. By now, the story of how that tradition began has been told and retold, but in the spirit of [...]