Passover

Our Congregation celebrates Passover together each year with a humanistic seder for families.

Bring your friends and family and enjoy reading the CHJ Haggadah with us as well as homemade haroset, maror, “4 sips of wine” and other celebrational Passover foods and symbols. Our seder includes contemporary additions to recognize today’s refugees who seek freedom around the world.  We’ll sing songs and have a “chocolate afikomen hunt.” All children 12 & under will get a prize!

Although Passover began as a nature holiday, celebrating new life, it became a commemoration of the biblical exodus and the escape from slavery in ancient Egypt. Jews today read that story together each year, at home or in community, in the Haggadah. Many versions of the Haggadah are available, both religious and secular, including our secular, humanistic Haggadah. CHJ’s Haggadah includes both the legendary tale of the exodus from Egypt and the modern Jewish exodus stories, as well as the themes of its origin. Passover is also a celebration of human dignity and of the freedom that makes dignity possible.

Here is a sampling from the CHJ Passover Haggadah , in which we place a drop of wine on our plates to symbolize each of ten “Plagues of Injustice” in today’s world.

Reader:  Today each drop of wine stands for the hope that we can wipe out the plagues of injustice, which cause pain and loss to people everywhere.

Together:  (pouring a drop of wine for each Plague of Injustice)

We Pour Ten Drops For the Plagues of Our World:

Against the making of war,
and against the teaching of hate.
Against the despoiling of the earth,
and against the perverting of power.
Against the fomenting of crime,
and against the neglecting of human needs.
Against the oppressing of peoples,
and against the corrupting of culture,
Against the subjugation of learning
and against the erosion’s of freedom.