Apr 9, 2025
Apr 8, 2025
Haiku Hagaddah
Haiku Haggadah
© Rabbi Menachem Creditor#Pesach #haiku #1:
Order... Well, not quite.
Follow the script... Well, not quite.
Redemption waits. Nu?
#makeyyourlifeasong #befree
#Pesach #haiku #2:
Sanctify... But how?
Lean left. Drink deeply of life.
Know there's more to come.
#drinkdeeply #neverthirst #befree
#Pesach #haiku #3:
Wash... Touch hands, be still.
Blessing awaits, later on.
For now, grace peeks through.
#touchofgrace #befree
#Pesach #haiku #4:
Roots... Hidden below.
Life bursts through the hardened ground.
Sharp, crisp, fresh. Alive.
#unstoppable #befree
#Pesach #haiku #5:
Broken... Ain't we all?
Start the story, fragile ones.
Be whole once again.
#healing #wholeness #befree
#Pesach #haiku #6:
Storytime... Young, old:
Banish darkness, find your light.
Share the path. There's room.
#sacredtelling #befree
#Pesach #haiku #7:
Wash... Emerge ready.
We made it! Raise it all up!
Bless the entire world.
#purified #befree
#Pesach #haiku #8:
Reveal... Eat... It's time.
Swallow the story. Become.
Freedom is in you.
#internalizefreedom #befree
#Pesach #haiku #9:
Bitter... with the sweet.
No true tale has only bliss.
Cry. Feel. Let it out.
#itsalrighttocry #saltytears #befree
#Pesach #haiku #10:
Wrapping... All mashed up,
memories combined as one.
Delicious. Messy.
#earlofsandwich #crunchymemory #befree
#Pesach #haiku #11:
Nourish... Soul. Body.
Freedom cannot be a thought.
Either real or not.
#liberation #physical #befree
#Pesach #haiku #12:
Hidden... Discovered.
Brokenness made whole. Renewed.
But not the same. Changed.
#outoforderseder #befree
#Pesach #haiku #13:
Bless... I have enough.
Grateful for this abundance,
I promise to share.
#letallwhoarehungry #comeandeat
#Pesach #haiku #14:
Praise... Explode with song!
Joyful voices express thanks
to the Source of All.
#radicalamazement #befree
#Pesach #haiku #15:
Parting... Completed.
We've done as did our elders.
May our dreams come true.
#hope #future #itisdone #befree #TellingOurStory #FromSlaveryToFreedom #EveryGeneration #RememberYouWereASlave #MaggidMoments #QuestionsThatLiberate #WeWereThereToo #SederAsResistance #LiberationLiturgy #SacredTelling
Pesach, Matzah, Maror: Telling Our Story from the Inside Out
April 8, 2025
This coming Saturday night and Sunday night, Jews across the diaspora will gather around seder tables. In Israel, they will do so for one night. And in every corner of the world, we'll reach again for the sacred script of our people — the Haggadah — to relive the story that lives in our bones.
Different commentaries, different designs — but the same core. And I find myself wondering: What if we didn’t use them this year?
What if, instead, we placed a picture in front of each participant? One image that holds the whole story. No printed words, just the invitation: “Tell me your story.”
Would that be enough?
I ask this not flippantly, but as someone who has studied and taught the seder for years. What I’m realizing is that the story of the Exodus — the foundational story of who we are — is not trapped in the pages of any book. We carry it within us.
The Haggadah itself tells us this. Raban Gamliel teaches: “Whoever does not say Pesach, Matzah, and Maror has not fulfilled their obligation.” And so, perhaps the inverse is also true. If you do say those three — if you truly speak of Pesach, taste the Matzah, feel the sting of Maror — then you've entered the story. You’ve fulfilled your purpose.
I’m not suggesting you skip the rest of the seder, God forbid. But let’s take Raban Gamliel seriously. Why these three?
Pesach. The word refers to the original sacrifice, offered before we were free. Before. We ate it behind closed doors, shadows of fear still clinging to us, with the Angel of Death roaming the streets of Egypt. We were not yet redeemed — but we were told to act as if we would be. The Pesach symbol on our seder plate is not the sign of arrival. It's the trembling faith of the precipice. Redemption is not a moment. It’s a decision to believe in a future, even when the present is still shackled.
Matzah. That first crunch — oh, how it echoes! It’s not just the taste of unleavened bread. It’s the urgency of our ancestors' footsteps, leaving everything behind, not knowing where the next step would land. Matzah doesn’t just say, “We didn’t have time.” It whispers, “We couldn’t wait any longer.” It is holy impatience. Sacred propulsion. The world we left was unsustainable. Freedom didn’t wait until we were ready. It came suddenly, like a cry in the night.
Maror. I remember being a child, grabbing a too-big piece of raw horseradish root, trying to prove I was strong enough to i. The fire that spread through my sinuses, the involuntary tears — they taught me something books never could. Maror lives in the body. It is the ache of memory. It says, “Don’t just talk about suffering — remember it, taste it, own it.” Our story is not abstract. It’s visceral. It burns, and we are not supposed to avoid that.
So why these three? Because our story is not just words. It’s food. It’s sensation. It’s survival.
Raban Gamliel lived after the Temple was destroyed. His world had shattered. And still, he taught us: Don’t forget the story. Even if all you have are three symbols, they are enough to carry you home.
And so I return to that question: If you had only a picture — no text, no guide — and I asked you to tell your story, could you? Would you say, “Here is my Egypt. Here is my Exodus. Here is my pain. And here is my hope”?
This year, like every year, the seder is both ancient and heartbreakingly current. In Israel and across the Jewish world, families are marking Pesach with empty chairs and hearts full of longing. We are praying for the return of hostages. We remember those who never made it to freedom.
There will be two Haggadot on my table this year published by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, one from a year ago, one - this year's - with commentary from redeemed hostages and family members of those still in bondage. This is our tradition — to add our modern experience to the margins of the eternal text. To let today’s pain become part of tomorrow’s liberation.
So friends, when we sit at our tables this year, may we remember: the seder is not just a ritual. It’s an invitation. To own our story. To embody it. To feel the fire and the crunch and the tears. And to ask ourselves: What does it really mean to be free?
We are Raban Gamliel’s students now. His voice echoes across the generations, saying: “If you didn’t speak of Pesach, Matzah, and Maror — if you didn’t eat the story, live the story, feel the story — then you don’t yet know the story.”
So let it in. The fear. The urgency. The pain. And let us walk together into the next chapter.
May we write it with clarity and courage.
May we one day say with certainty, not just Next year in Jerusalem, but This year, in wholeness.
Chag Sameach.
Apr 7, 2025
Pesach: The Time-Traveler’s Table
Pesach: The Time-Traveler’s Table
Rabbi Menachem
Creditor
April 7, 2025
Today is exactly 18 months since October 7th, 2023. And if that weighs on us—and of course it does—our hearts still know that we can’t begin to comprehend the weight borne by those who’ve been held in darkness, in tunnels, for 18 unrelenting months. And so as we prepare for Pesach, a holiday of liberation, of leaning into freedom, let us not forget that there are people we love who are not yet free. Whatever we carry into this year’s Seder—and I do not diminish for one second the burdens you and I carry—we must also carry them: the hostages, the families who count the minutes, the ache, the loss, the terrible waiting. Every second, every hour, every day.
Right now, on my kitchen table, there are two Haggadot created by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a sacred space supported by UJA-Federation of NY since day one. One is from last year. One is from this year. Both are soaked in love and agony. But this year’s Haggadah is different—it includes words of freed hostages. It includes commentary and prayer by those who survived the unbearable, voices of those once enslaved, once silenced, now speaking Torah, now interpreting their own Exodus. It contains hope. Pain, yes. But also hope. That alone would be enough to break a person open.
It was never meant to be this way. And still—we teach Pesach anyway. We must. Our tradition insists that we enter this ancient story as if we ourselves were there. That is what Jewish time demands—not nostalgia, but embodiment. Not pretending, but remembering so fully that we awaken the past into the present.
There is a legend (Genesis Rabbah 55:88):
In the very moment the Israelites stepped into the Sea, Mount Moriah—the mountain where Abraham bound Isaac—began to move from its place, altar and all. Abraham’s hand was raised. Isaac was still bound. That whole scene, that unimaginable moment, had been waiting since before the world was born.
Far from there, at the Sea, God cried out to Moses: “My children are in distress! The Sea is before them, the enemy is behind them—and you are standing there praying?”
Moses, overwhelmed, asked, “What should I do?”
God answered: “Lift your staff!”
And at that moment, the Sea split—and on Mount Moriah, the Angel’s voice rang out: “Do not raise your hand against the boy.”
Time collapsed.
The story of Abraham and Isaac and the story of the Exodus folded into one another, held in the same breath, the same sacred heartbeat. Because Jewish memory isn’t linear. It is living. It is layered. And in every generation, we are called to see ourselves in it. To feel it in our bones.
This is why, even in the heaviness of this year’s Seder, we drink the first cup of wine, we lean to the left. We dare to act free even when parts of our people are still in shackles. That’s the paradox of Jewish ritual—we are here and there, then and now. We are Abraham holding the knife. We are Isaac bound to the altar. We are the children stepping into the water. We are Moses lifting the staff.
And we are the parents praying for their children to come home.
Pesach was never meant to be celebrated in a time of complete peace. It never has been. Even in better years, it ends with yearning: Next Year in Jerusalem. Not as a conclusion, but as a cry. This year, that cry is more urgent. More real.
Because today, we say: Bring them home now.
We gather at our tables this year not from a place of comfort but from a place of radical honesty. Pesach demands it. Our ancestors didn’t sugarcoat the story. We begin in genut, in degradation. “We were slaves.” We were lost. We were wounded. And we tell it like it was. That’s how the journey to freedom begins—not from joy, but from truth.
And yet… at the very beginning of the Seder, we say borei pri hagafen, we drink the wine, we lean to the left. We dare to taste sweetness. We dare to embody freedom even while recounting the pain. That’s Jewish time. That’s the miracle of ritual. That’s what it means to be awake to this moment, every moment.
The difference between the two Haggadot on my table is profound. The first had no voices of return. The second is shaped by testimonies of survivors, soldiers, and freed hostages. There is grief in every word. But there is also life. There is also dancing.
Not all of them dance. But some do. And that is enough to whisper hope into this broken world.
This is what Pesach must mean this year. That even now—especially now—we must be time travelers. We must lose our roots just long enough to remember who we are, and then plant them again, deeper. We must drink the wine, tell the story, and make space at our table for every soul not yet free.
Because when we travel through time—when we truly remember—we become the people who can walk through seas and move mountains. We become the people who don’t stop praying, and who also know when to lift the staff.
May our feet be grounded, our hearts in heaven, and our voices loud enough to split every sea that still stands in our way.
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