New Passover material for a 21st century Seder

The Haggadah states that there are four different kinds of Jewish children. In our generations they are: Connected children, Estranged children, Choosing to be Jewish children and My Past was Jewish children.

Connected Jewish children enjoy being part of the Jewish community by learning about Jewish holidays and history, learning Hebrew in preparation for Bar or Bat Mitzvah. As teens they are involved in doing good deeds, and are not negatively judgmental about other Jews ways of being Jewish.

Estranged Jewish children have lost or severed their connection with with the Jewish People’s lifestyle and reject any effort to bring them back. They are like the Hebrews in Egypt who did not join Moses’ journey into the Sinai wilderness and remained at home; while a mixed multitude of non-Jews joined Prophet Moses’ journey (Exodus 12:38) with Prophet Miriam. (Miriam is Moses’ older sister. She is called “Miriam the prophetess” in Exodus 15:20).

Choosing to be Jewish children were not born to be Jews. They made the decision to become Jewish and join the Jewish People; its faith and its fate. These souls were already present at Mount Sinai. Talmud Shabbat (146a) tells us “Rav Ashi cites Deuteronomy 29:13-14, “Not only with you do I make this covenant and this oath, but with everyone who stands here with us today before our God, and with everyone who is not here with us today i.e. future converts.”

‘My Past was Jewish’ children, had Jewish ancestors in generations past and often return to the Jewish People when they find out. They should be welcomed and encouraged whenever you meet them.

If we all can live up to the ideal that religious pluralism as the will of God we will help fulfill the 2700 year old vision of Prophet Isaiah: “On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt, and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. On that day Israel will join a three-party alliance with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing upon the heart. The LORD of Hosts will bless them saying, “Blessed be Egypt My people, Assyria My handiwork, and Israel My inheritance.”…(Isaiah 19:23-5)

I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the day will come when I shall be able to carry them out.” ~Anne Frank”

The greatest sin that Greek philosophy inflicted upon all three Abrahamic religions was the erroneous idea that Allah-God does not need or desire our prayers or our moral activities because Aristotle taught a concept of God as a perfect “unmoved mover”. All of creation is dependent on God, but God is totally independent of everything. This means that God, like gravity, has no personal relationships with anyone or anything. The Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible and the Muslim Quran teach exactly the opposite.

The foundation of all three monotheistic religions is that personal relationships are the essence of human life with other humans; as well as Salah-prayer for the one God who created us all.

Naturally, it sounds totally self-centered to say that an individual person, who is one of eight billion humans on planet earth, is of concern to a Deity capable of creating a universe of billions of galaxies, each one containing hundreds of millions of stars, most with solar systems, with many of these planets providing a home for various forms of life.

Yet to me it sounds even more self-centered to say, that intelligent life developed only at one time and in one place in this fantastic universe. If you can believe that our universe is not simply the result of random chance, there is no reason not to believe that the Divine intelligence that created it, can also relate personally to every individual aspect of that Divine creation; and an Exodus from Russia is also a miracle like an Exodus from Babylonia or Egypt. Always remember the 1979 peace treaty signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and witnessed by President Jimmy Carter at the White House.