PASSOVER, The festival of Freedom

why you don’t have to be Jewish to celebrate Passover


Gathered together,
many of us and them,
old and young
people of all persuasions
celebrating our human kinship
and becoming us
together

learning the story
from a book read backwards,
the Hagaddah
ancient tales of
slavery and suffering
and plagues sent down to
vanquish the oppressors,

and discovering the world of slavery today

Moses pleading with Pharoah to
let my people go

And the miraculous escape from
slavery through the
parted Red Sea,
a pathway to a new life in a new
desert land, to freedom at last.

Free at last!

The dream of Martin Luther King
The jubilant proclamation of Nelson Mandela

The table with eggs dipped in the salty tears of the oppressed
bitter herbs, and unleavened bread
baked in the desert,
apples chopped with honey,
the cement of bricks that Jewish slaves
lifted for an eternity of suffering.

And now in 2010,
we together,
of many beliefs
and many ways of praying
and many ways of wishing and hoping
lament the slaves of now,
of 2010,
27 million throughout the world
more than any time in history
half of whom are children
children dragged from their childhood
into prisons of pain and horror
in fields and factories,
and brothels…

We raise our glasses
to toast those who fearlessly
work together to create
paths to freedom,
for all.
Everywhere.
We break unleavened bread
together
for renewed strength
and hope…

Our Passover, together.