How do we celebrate seder with the elephant in the room?

In 20 years of teaching seder workshops, I always open with a (dad) joke: The seder doesn’t really have four questions, only one: “When do we eat?” I’d then offer tips and ideas from my father Noam Zion’s “A Different Night” or from our joint sequel Haggadah, “A Night to Remember.” But this year, as I taught in both America and in Israel, I’ve been asked no questions of the stomach, only piercing questions of the heart. And I’ve found that the text and rituals of the seder itself offer the best guidance. Here, then, are four painful questions for the seder in 2025 and ways to address them in the spirit of the Haggadah.

How can we celebrate joyfully when 24 living hostages are still suffering in Hamas slavery?

We cannot. But not having a seder would be the wrong response. The seder is an exercise in empathy, an invitation to taste the bitterness of our people, and to find a path out — together. This year, it is not simply the bitterness of the past that we recall, but the unbearable bitterness of our present. Creating a ritual at our table to make the suffering of the hostages palpable and real is exactly the kind of action the Haggadah expects us to perform: adding an empty chair, including a half empty cup, or reading stories and texts by the hostages and their families.

In a recent podcast, Rachel Goldberg, the mother of murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin z”l, suggested such a ritual: we should not only dip in salt water, but actually sip salt water. Hostages who returned from Hamas’ despicable bondage reported that the water they were given to drink was heavily salted. As we hold that dour taste in our mouths, we know in our body that we are experiencing one-one-hundredth of what our brothers in the Hamas tunnels are experiencing.

On this Passover, unadulterated joy has no place. But we need the warmth and camaraderie of the seder ritual in order to have the strength to continue fighting for release of the hostages, supporting Israel’s soldiers and their families, and struggling for what is right in our countries, so that those who are suffering can return to a world where joy, warmth and camaraderie reside amongst us.

How do we celebrate the seder when there’s an elephant in the room?

This past weekend, I travelled from Israel to Boston for four days of pre-Passover teaching. Everyone seemed to be asking different versions of the same question:

“My daughter has told us that she won’t come to the seder if we mention Israel. What should I do?” or “I want to do seder with my parents in New Jersey, but I can’t go if my Trump-supporting cousins are there.” Back in Israel, families are dreading gathering around the seder table with relatives who don’t share their views on the war in Gaza or differ greatly in their opinions about Israeli politicians or government decisions.

Our shared Passover table is breaking apart under the pressure of our dire debates.

As I heard these questions, I thought of the wicked child in the Haggadah, who asks sharp questions and is accused by the Haggadah of “divorcing himself from the community.” Yet even this “wicked” child is still invited to the table, and afforded a place in the Haggadah text. The Haggadah challenges us to conserve the wide family seder table, on this night of all nights. The text of the Four Children invites us to recognize that each child responds differently to the story of our people. Our job on seder night is to hear the questions of the next generation, as the Mishna commands: “according to the interest of the child – the parent teaches.”

Michel Kichka, “Father, Daughter and Afikoman”, from “A Night to Remember” by Mishael and Noam Zion, 2007. Courtesy of the authors.

But what of the parental response? It is commonly understood that the Haggadah tells us to hit the wicked child’s teeth for betraying the Jewish collective. But a careful reading reveals that the Haggadah does not say הכה את שיניו – hit his teeth. Rather, the Hebrew text says הקהה את שיניו – blunt his teeth, take the bite out.

How do we take the bite out of sharp, morally misguided or offensive questions? Under every sharp question asked by a family member lies a legitimate concern or a shared value. It is our reading of reality in which our answers diverge. Recognizing the shared value takes the edge off. “It sounds to me like peace is very important to you. Peace is important to me as well. Yet we disagree on what can bring such peace about.” Or “I can see you are acting out of a deep fear for the future of the Jewish people. I too am afraid for the Jewish people – of what we may become, of how we might be seen.” Bringing the conversation to the level of the shared value, the joint concern, enables us to make room for each other at the table and place for each other in the Jewish story — without foregoing our convictions.

As hosts, we should set the tone for positive discourse and invite participants to consider how to attain this together.

Our seder is different from our social media feeds. We may not find ourselves in a comfortable echo chamber, and when we encounter divergent views we should be careful not to immediately like or dislike, unfriend, or lash out with comments. Sitting in person around the same table, sharing food, carrying layers of knowing each other for years, we exercise being in deep relationship, warts and all — the exact opposite of the algorithmicized and alienating discourse prevalent on screens.

Each day my child reads the news and asks: “How can this be happening?!” What do I answer?

Whether in Israel or the United States, reading the newspaper nowadays is a bewildering experience. Two weeks ago, while returning from Friday night dinner with friends in our quiet neighborhood of Talpiot, the blare of a siren cut through the peace. A Houthi missile was making its way towards Jerusalem. Alarmed, we ran to an underground parking lot and were invited to a stranger’s shelter.

Suddenly, like the third child in the Haggadah, my 12-year-old daughter Eliyah, our third child, cried out “Mah zeh?” “What is this?” She wasn’t referring to the siren, a sound she has come to know well, but rather to the inconceivable reality which has become our life. Her 8-year-old sister Sapir, however, our fourth child, does not share this question. In the years since she was in preschool, Sapir has experienced two years of masked pandemic, months of protests and inner strife, and two years of war. She is the child who doesn’t ask “What is this?” “This” is simply her reality.

As I looked at my daughters that night, I realized that in our new reality, we have no choice but to be more like the fourth child this year. When every conversation begins with “Can you believe that…” and every reading of the newspaper is met with a headshaking “This is unprecedented!” we weaken our stance and deplete our energies. We remain stuck in shock and awe, disbelief and denial. Like last year’s chametz, we must leave behind our mourning for the world we lost, and stop yearning for politics to “return to normal.”

The events of the past few months reveal that we are truly in a new chapter in Jewish history, a new era of world history. The two homes of the Jewish people are deeply shaken and will not return to what they were. The post-World War Two order is fully over. That does not mean that a new, better world order is not possible. It does not mean we will never be safely at home again. It means we need to realize we are in a new chapter in the long story of the Jewish people, and the faster we understand this, the faster we can find our moral and strategic response. It is time to stop asking “How can this be happening?” and start asking: “What is my role now, in this new reality?”

I don’t feel much hope right now, for Israel or for America. How can I sing ‘Next year in Jerusalem?’

The last line of the Haggadah – “Next year in Jerusalem” – never quite worked for me. I was born and raised in 1980s Jerusalem, and it was quite well built. Across the world, from New York to Sydney, Jewish communities had built Jerusalems of their own. In our lifetime, the climax of the Haggadah became an anti-climax, and no measure of re-interpretation could make that line pack the punch it once had.

Yet suddenly, this year, that prayer feels more relevant than ever before. Finding the ability to say “Next Year in Jerusalem!” seems like the most important challenge of the seder. How do we feel hope when the outlook is so dark for both Jewish homes? For many Jews this year, it is very hard to believe in the future.

Yet this cannot be a moment of despair. Perhaps we’ve become spoiled by our re-built Jerusalems. “Jews have had a holiday from history,” a fellow rabbi told me, “and now that holiday is over.” On this Passover, we can find solace in the fact that for most of Jewish history, Jews were living in far worse conditions than ours, and yet they had the muster to keep saying “L’shana ha’ba’ah b’Yerushalayim”— Next year in Jerusalem. They used the seder as a way to conjure hope in themselves and in their families.

What about the seder helps us build hope? The memory that after bitterness and narrowness there is breadth and sweetness. The faith that there is a watchful force that has ensured that of all ancient civilizations, we alone remain: telling the same story, eating the same food, sharing the same dream.

Michel Kichka, “4 Cups”, from “A Night to Remember” by Mishael and Noam Zion, 2007. Courtesy of the authors.

At the end of the seder, we gaze at the fifth cup of the seder, the Cup of Elijah, a cup of hope and redemption. It is the cup of faith in the future, a cup that we pour but do not drink. At the beginning of the seder, the cup is empty. This year, I plan on inviting my family to fill it up gradually at various points throughout the evening. Slowly we’ll fill it – with words, songs, memories and flavors. Our questions, our actions, and our audacity to believe the world can be different despite all the forces working against us – all fill the cup of hope further. The youngest child singing the Ma Nishtana partially fills that cup, as does the lively argument, which reminds us that ideas can redeem the world. By the end of the evening, our Cup of Hope runneth over. Together, we open the door for Elijah, and hope: “L’shana ha’ba’ah b’ Yerushalayim ha-bnuya” – Next year in Jerusalem rebuilt.”

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Read Mishael and Noam Zion’s 2025 seder Supplement, with stories, poetry, ideas and illustrations by Michel Kichka.