This, the completion of our final set of fours, is phrased differently. We seem to have turned a corner. We’ve been “removed” from burdens, “delivered” from slavery, and “redeemed”. We might expect to have been “set free” on the other side to do as we wish. But, no, the text continues.

וְלָקַחְתִּי אֶתְכֶם לִי לְעָם.

V’lakachti etchem li l’am.

And I will take you to be my people.¹

Throughout our history we have often felt as if taken: held or pushed by a strange force field. Why? We may not fully understand what we are to do, but we know we must do something.

🌀 Raise the fourth cup of wine.

Tonight we recline. Our reclining is not a sign of laziness, but of freedom, a respite as we decide on how to proceed. No one forces us to eat on the run, at our desks, or out in the fields. We enjoy a meal that includes conversation and song, a meal that braids together the various strands of our shared life on earth:

focusing our attention on the burgeoning year as it blossoms around us;

encouraging renewed growth within us;

intensifying our awareness of the efforts for freedom,

both for autonomy and sovereignty.

After drinking three of our four cups of wine, we also know that we have come most of the way from the degradation of slavery to the dignity of freedom, at least in the Seder.

But freedom, like wine, can lead to a powerful headiness. Liberation itself is not the goal.

We may have the strength to act according to our own decisions. Yet we understand that not every decision we make is the correct one, merely because it is ours. We know that a central aspect of our freedom is the freedom to make mistakes and to address them. Because we can act out of strength, we need to learn that not by might, nor by power², but by making the awesome divine attributes of justice, mercy and humility our own, will we all achieve wholeness.

Therefore, before we drink this fourth and last cup of wine, we pause.

🌀 Set down the cup of wine.

Earlier this evening in our adventure together, we asked the traditional four questions. Perhaps questions without without clear answers make another stage of liberation.

🌀 If reading in a circle, reverse the direction. In addition, whoever reads each of the next four paragraphs should read with someone sitting opposite so that two people read each question (a total of eight).

• Is our eating the “bread of affliction” for one week during the year serve as no more than a gesture, allowing us to feel that we are no longer responsible to act as the yeast that will raise us and our neighbors?

• Can we rise above the bitterness we taste when those around us act in ways that cause use to feel pain?

• Can we mix fresh vegetables in salt water without them losing either their unique taste or being destroyed? What happens when others’ struggles intersect with ours and we are hurt by their words and actions?

• Might our leaning left, using our right hands for eating, as our tradition suggests, cause us to trigger the left portion of our brain, strengthening our compassion, even toward those we feel are wrong or may have hurt us? How can we now “lean in” and act to cause change?

Symbolically, we gather with families all over the world. Many cower in fear, some stand in danger, others sit in comfort.

Because our text refers to us as a people, not individuals, we ask those who would turn their backs on our people’s collective efforts: “הַאַ֣ף תִּסְפֶּ֔ה צַדִּ֖יק עִם־רָשָֽׁע Will you sweep away the innocent along with the guilty?”³

So, enough of back-patting. Once we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and we have experienced many other horrors. But we have also been on the other side, both individually and collectively. Many of us enjoy numerous privileges. We still benefit from historical slavery in America and the oppression of many.

We hope to learn from our experience of slavery and homelessness, not always as much as we could.

Assassinations, family separations, expulsions, home demolitions, massacres, murders, annexations, weakening of the democratic ethos here and around the world, ecological ruin… these signs indicate something is wrong. These plagues call for correction.

☞ Is a society ever beyond redemption?
How do we balance our power with responsibility?

How might we recognize our complicity and imperfection?

How do we engage with those to whom we are related, when their acts are evil?

We struggle to balance our concentric and overlapping identities as individuals, families, affinity groups, ethnic groups, nations, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities or expressions.

☞ Which other identities do we seek to create?
How are these self-imposed, or applied to us by others?

Are there some we can reject or that others can deny us?

How might they overlap and possibly even conflict with each other… do they exist in tension within us and our own families?

How do we become and remain masters of our own history, agents of our own fate, creators of our own cultures, defenders of what we have created, without impinging on the rights, agency and cultures of others?

We ask ourselves how we use our power to narrow the passageways, placing other people in the limiting straits of “Mitzra’yim.”

☞ How are we complicit?
Do we allow or enable injustice to continue?

Do we assure that we act out of justice, mercy, and humility not only from strength.

As we drink to honor our heroes throughout time, we stand with those everywhere who strive to develop a life guided by Prophetic ideals, whoever they are and wherever they live. We strive to be as Shiphrah and Puah, midwifing the creativity of others.

We say with them:

We need a bigger table, not a higher wall!

We will continue our work.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵנוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, בּוֹרֵא פְּרִי הַגָּפֶן.

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam, borei p’ri ha-gafen.

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, sovereign of all space and time, creator of the fruit of the vine.

🌀 All drink the fourth cup of wine.

Footnotes

¹ Exodus 6:7

² Zechariah 4:6

³ Genesis 18:23