Passover Resources
A Season for Freedom: Seder Supplements for Pesach 2025
This is the bread of journeys.
Of fragile, wild, journeys of hope.
Hope in leadership, in God, in ourselves.
That we can cross the toughest seas.
And dance with our timbrels held high.
And find our way home through the wild.
Because nobody can forever enslave us.
Not Pharaoh, not antisemitism, no one.
The matzah may easily break.
But we, we do not.
Hope binds us.
The matzah reminds us.
We hold one another’s hand.
Our journey is far from complete.
But we will one day arrive.
And on that day we will be one.
This is the bread of incredible journeys.
-by Rabbi Evan Shultz
1) A Ritual and Reading Affirming Our Support and Empathy for Immigrants and Refugees (In the Seder opening or just before reading the passage “My Father was a Wandering Aramean”)
Provided by HIAS
Before you begin the Seder, either walk with your guests to the front door or have one guest rise from the table and walk to the front door. There, place a pair of shoes on the doorstep and read the words below: The heart of the Passover Seder tells the story of the Jewish people’s exodus from slavery in Egypt. During the retelling of this story, we say the words, “יבא דבא ימרא (Arami oved avi).” This phrase is sometimes translated as “My father was a wandering Aramean” and other times as “An Aramean sought to destroy my father.” Somewhere between the two translations lies the essence of the Jewish experience: a rootless people who have fled persecution time and time again. When we recite the words “Arami oved avi,” we acknowledge that we have stood in the shoes of the refugee. Today, as we celebrate our freedom, we commit ourselves to continuing to stand with contemporary refugees and asylum seekers. In honor of this commitment, we place a pair of shoes on the doorstep of our home to acknowledge that none of us is free until all of us are free and to pledge to stand in support of welcoming those who do not yet have a place to call home.
2) The Breaking of the Middle Matzah and the Brokeness in the World
An interpretive reading to be recited just before breaking the middle matzah/Yachatz
Click here to download this supplement.
3) Four Questions for Today
An interpretive discussion to follow the traditional Four Questions
From the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
Consider this classic Jewish teaching (Yalkut Shimoni 13:2 on Genesis): God gathered dust [to create the first human] from the four corners of the world… Why from the four corners of the earth? So that if one comes from the east to the west… as they near departing from the world, it will not be said to them, “This land is not the dust of your body, it’s of mine. Go back to where you were created!” Rather, every place that a person walks, from there they were created and from there they will return.
- What are some of ‘the places you have walked,’ literally and figuratively, in your lifetime? How have those places shaped you?
- Think about the places where your ancestors lived. How have those places shaped you and your family? Think about the many places where our Jewish spiritual ancestors have lived. How are those places now a part of the body of the Jewish people and part of Jewish culture?
- What motivates someone to say to another, “go back?” How do we counter that harsh impulse?
- How can you apply this teaching, along with the Haggadah’s call to preserve the collective memory of forced migration across generations, to your own life? In what ways can you actively support immigrants and refugees in your own community?
4) A Seder Plate Inclusive for Trans People and for All People
To be recited at the time of explanation of the different parts of the seder plate.
Written by Rabbi Ariel Tovlev, a leading a trans rabbinic voice:
5) A Passover Ritual for the Captives
Rabbi Evan Shultz
