Kadesh:
Seder is the Hebrew word for 'order.' Judaism is a religion of order, it is a religion of ritual, rituals that have been passed down for 133 generations at the slowest possible evolution.
Yet we exist in an era of fluctuation. The world grew faster with the industrial revolution, exponentially faster with revolution of mass production, exponentially faster yet again in the digital revolution, and a mere generation later we stand on the cusp of exponent still faster in the revolution of artificial intelligence.
The technological revolutions have grown so fast that no person will track its developments as accurately as our own inventions. We have created technology of extra-human capability that knows us far better than we know it. We have, in effect, built our own god, and this god may judge us and find us wanting.
What means order in a world where we build an idol whose power is more demonstrable than a god who chooses not to present Himself? We have built the ultimate idol, an idol to whom we will bow down most every minute of every day, who watches us in sleep and judges us in wakefulness, an idol far more difficult to resist than God.
But like idolworship of all eras, God will rain destruction upon nations who worship false gods: the innocent along with the guilty, gentile and Jew. In God's desire to punish the wicked, death passes over few good households. How much greater may His jealous vengeance be against an idol so powerful? And yet, in an irony that may be unprecedented, the idol itself may be the instrument through which God wields His destruction.
But after periods of death come rebirth and life. Israel will rise up again, not just the people of Israel but the Israel of the world. Jerusalem of this world will be rebuilt, and through its rebuilding we discover our personal visions of a more celestial Jerusalem.
This is the order of things, and so has been the world's order since God's very discovery.
This, not just the liberation of Egypt, is what is commemorated in the spring of every year, in every culture and every era. After winter's death comes spring's rebirth, commemorated in the holidays of Pesach, Easter, Holi, Norwuz, Songkran, Ramadan and the birthday of Buddha.
In our end is our beginning, and on this night, before our harvest, we prepare the rituals of rebirth.
Amen
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Orchatz
We now wash our hands. No blessing is necessary. All that's necessary to recall in this abundance of water is the water shortages that befall two-thirds of the world. Not just for far-flung billions of South Asia and the Arab Middle East, but in places we know intimately like Israel, California, and the Great Plains. Around the world, fire is the ever present possibility. Those who cannot cleanse with water may cleanse with fire, and time runs short to irrigate before their fires spread.
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Karpas:
By dipping parsley in salt water, we now commemorate the tears shed by Hebrew slaves in Egypt.
At this moment we have to remember the suffering of the Israeli hostages in Gaza and our fallen soldiers, but to stop the commemoration there would be outrageous. It is a Jewish custom from time immemorial to commemorate fallen foes. Vengeance is a right reserved only for God. We exult in the deaths of leaders like Sinwar, Haniyeh, Nasrallah, Raisi, and we make no apologies for celebrating the deaths of their many, many collaborators; but under no circumstances may we celebrate the deaths of the innocent - be their deaths collateral or unnecessary, they are innocents as deserving of life as we, and whether their leaders bear much responsibility, we are the instruments by which their lives were taken and sometimes the conductors of their atrocity.
The tears do not end in Gaza, they extend to the world: to the fallen soldiers and civilians of Ukraine, Russia and Crimea. They extend to the world's many underreported conflicts like the missing million Uigyur Muslims of China, to the five million displaced Sudanese, to the lost 600,000 of Syria and the 18 million refugees, the lost 176,000 of Afghanistan and the 7 and a half million refugees, to the lost 110-200 thousand of Iraq and 2 million refugees, to the two million refugees of Congo, to the dire situations of Ethiopia, Yemen, and South Sudan. To the twenty-six and a half million of North Korea.
They all deserve commemoration and assistance.
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