QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSIONS

For families and younger people:

1.    On a scale of one to 10, how important is being Jewish to you? Explain why.

2.    If your son, daughter, brother, sister, cousin, or best friend told you that they planned to raise their children without any Jewish education or identity, how would you react? What would you say to convince them otherwise?

3.    If you thought the existence of Israel was in danger, would you risk your life to help save it?

4.    What do you like about being Jewish? What don't you like?

5.    Is it important to you to have (or for your children to have) mostly Jewish friends? Why?

6.    Ask everyone what makes them feel free. Talk about memorable events and customs from previous Seders.

For more involved discussions:

7.    PEOPLEHOOD: Martin Buber suggests that the Exodus from Egypt marked the transformation of Judaism from a religion of individuals (Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, etc) to Jewish Peoplehood. The Torah emphasizes the formation of Am Yisrael (The Jewish People) out of a "mixed multitude" of individual practitioners. To embody this process, the Seder builds a sense of symbolic community via the "circle" of the Seder table. We define the participants as insiders, collectively partaking of the re-enactment of the Exodus.

8.    JUSTICE: Rabbi Irving Greenberg insists that Pesach is a protest against those who assume an inevitable victory in history of power over justice. For Rabbi Greenberg, "The freeing of the Hebrew slaves testifies that all human beings are meant to be free. History will not be finished until all are free. And God both cares about and is independent of human control."

9.    JEWS MODEL HOLINESS: The Exodus did not destroy evil in the world. What it did was set up an alternative [holy] conception of life. Were it not for the Exodus, humans would have reconciled themselves to the evils that exist in the world. The Exodus re-establishes the dream of societal perfection. It thereby creates the tension that must exist until that holy reality is redeemed.

10.    DEVICTIMIZATION: As a minority group, it is tempting for Jews to internalize a sense of cultural inferiority. Yet the annual multi-generational classroom - the Seder - commands Jewish adults to instruct our offspring each year about Jewry's special self-worth. We merited God intervening personally in a most direct way in order to save our ancestors from extinction. We ought to be proud of our Jewish identity and heritage.

11.    GOD IS ONE: The Ten Plagues are not random. Rather they are directed against the primary gods of Egypt. Egyptians worshipped the Nile River; thus it is turned red as blood. They idolized light; thus a plague of darkness. The message is clear - God is greater than all 10 of the Egyptian gods collectively. Thus, God alone [not Moses] is mentioned in the Haggadah. Even the greatest human leader is trivial in comparison to God.

12.    MATZAH'S MEANING: It is both the bread of freedom and of slavery. It is not unusual for ex-slaves to invert the very symbols of slavery to express their rejection of the masters' values. Matzah is the bread of the Exodus, of freedom; chametz is the bread eaten in the house of bondage. Yet Matzah is the also the hard ration, the slave food; chametz is the rich, soft food to which free people treat themselves.