We pull the readings from an Haggadah named A Different Night.

In addition to going around the table asking people to read selections from the Haggadah we also pass around 3 x 5 cards with quotes on them that I have selected and Ellen has approved which each person reads and is encouraged to comment on.

The themes this year start with the broad issue of freedom from slavery which is the foundational message associated with Passover. We include some thoughts on the revolutionary activities going on in the Middle-East. We also will touch on the issue of how the Bible and the Exodus story deals with how Jews were dealt with as strangers in a strange land and the general issue of the ‘other’ in society. Finally we will talk a bit about the issue of the role of women in society. It remains my contention that how women are treated is a societal “canary in the coal mine”. That is, how well societies deal with women tell one a lot about the society in general.

The quotes we will be using follow:

Eric Hoffer

In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

Helen Keller

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

Thomas Jefferson

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

King Whitney Jr.

Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.

Benjamin Franklin.

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.

Frederick Douglass.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning.

Edward Abbey.

Freedom begins between the ears.

Macaulay.

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not go into the water till he had learned to swim.

William Pitt, 1783.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

Mohandas K. Gandhi:

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.

Irene Peter

Just because everything is different doesn’t mean that everything has changed.

Margaret Mead

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

W. Edwards Deming

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.

Winston Churchill

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

Trina Paulus, Hope for the Flowers

“How does one become a butterfly?” she asked pensively.

“You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

Lucretia Mott

The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation because in the degradation of woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.

Estelle R. Ramey

Women’s chains have been forged by men, not by anatomy.

Grover Cleveland, 1905

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.  The relative positions to be assumed by man and woman in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence than ours.

Aung San Suu Kyi

The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all

Louis Carroll

“Thinking again?” the duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin. “I have a right to think,” said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried. “Just about as much right,” said the Duchess, “as pigs have to fly.”

Robert Orben

Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.

Rosellen Brown

A slave is one who waits for someone else to free him.

Gloria Steinem

However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group’s greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion, or all four. However far it may expand, the progression inevitably rests on unequal power and airtight roles within the family.

Abigail Adams

If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.

We have between 15 and 25 people (I recognize that is a bit of a range) including family, friends, guests from various sources, Jews and non-Jews.

Each year we try and focus on a few themes to focus the more general topic of the Exodus and its implications to us today.

The following is what we are sending out to the participants this year. In addition to the readings we do, we put quotes that at least loosely tie to the themes we are focusing on, on 3 x 5 cards. During the course of the Seder we ask participants to read the quotes and comment on them. Tomorrow, if I remember, I’ll post the quotes we are using.

We welcome all of our guests to share the first Seder this year at our house, Monday evening, April 18; the 15^th day of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar. Passover occurs at the full moon of Nisan, which is the first month of the Hebrew calendar.

In the simplest sense, Passover celebrates the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt after 400 years of slavery to freedom under the leadership of Moses; or as many people know it, when Charlton Heston led Edward G. Robinson away from Yul Brynner.

But in reality, this story and its associated traditions, perhaps the most accessible of all Jewish celebrations, is much richer and more complex. What did freedom mean to the Jews who left Egypt, to the Jews who edited and finalized the wording of the Bible, or to us as we sit here today in one of the most free societies that ever existed.

For those less familiar with the traditions of the Seder and for those new to its celebration in our house, we thought it would be useful to provide a brief summary of what we typically do, and how we have made some minor adjustments due to the special nature of having so many participants of varying ages.

We are commanded to tell the story of the Exodus as if we were there to experience it. We do so during the Seder, which in Hebrew means ‘order’, that is the sequence we tell the story. We use an Haggadah, which in Hebrew means ‘telling’, to provide guidance. At the beginning of the evening, we will explain the steps we will follow.

Each year, we decide on a specific theme associated with the main story of Passover. In the past this has ranged from looking at the role of women in the story to the meaning of freedom itself. This year, we touch on a number of themes, focusing on today’s events to drive the discussion.

What relevant meaning can we derive from the events in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and other places in the geographic homeland of the original Exodus?

In an age of globalization, in a country undergoing significant demographic change, can we learn lessons from how Jews were treated as strangers in a strange land? Throughout the Torah there are numerous commandments about the treatment of strangers in our midst. In a world of political and economic upheaval where globalization and the challenges of refugees are always present, what is our responsibility to the “other”?

And in a time when many people are turning to one might refer to as more traditional forms of religious behavior, what does this mean to what is sometimes referred to as the cultural ‘canary in a coal mine’, the treatment of women in society.

For those who like to measure by counting, Bereshit is the longest of the five books in the Torah, with 20, 512 of the 79,847 Hebrew words; 78,064 of the 304,805 Hebrew letters. For those who like to consider meanings, considering how short Bereshit is, the stories and characters are among the most referenced in Western Civilization. Complex and contradictory and very human, and thus memorial.

Each week in synagogues around the world, a portion of the Torah, called a parashah, is read. After this reading, typically one of the religious leaders, perhaps the Rabbi, or a layperson, provides a lesson, called a D’var Torah or Drasha, using the reading as the basis.

This week, the portion being read was called Vayeira, Genesis chapter 18, verse 1, through chapter 22, verse 24. It covers a lot of ground, starting with Abraham being visited by three strangers and ending with the Akedah, or binding of Isaac.

At Ohr Kodesh, the synagogue where my wife Ellen and I belong, Ellen gave the D’var Torah this week focusing on the lessons learned from the visit of those three visitors and what it should mean to us. While her discussion dealt with people we might know but not interact with in a syngogue, it is applicable to many other situations.

I provide it here for your reading pleasure and to provide some food for thought.

D’var torah shabbat vayera

My personal opinion is that faith is just that, faith. To me, faith does not have to be ‘proven’ by the historicity of religious texts or disproven by the lack of same. My interest has pretty much nothing to do with my Jewish beliefs, but rather curiosity as to whether the historic record is consistent or inconsistent, or has any evidence at all, related to the Bible as history. There has been a lot of new information collected over the last twenty years and the ability to interpret the material already collected has increased enormously. Thus there is lots to read and think about.

Over time, my interests stray a bit from that original focus and have moved to early Christianity and on to the middle ages and Islam, covering what I call the three major Abrahamic religions. When I talk about, and I guess write about, these thoughts I do find myself more cautious when discussing Christianity or Islam, since as a Jew I sometimes feel how my thoughts will be taken, which I try to always disassociate with faith and belief, may be misinterpreted.

A discussion about the Edict of Milan after the jump …

In any event, recently I received an email from the National Defense University, a wonderful institution about their Empires series, http://www.nationalwarcollege.org/EMPIRES/index.htm,  To quote from their web page “The purpose of the “Empires” series is simply to take a sophisticated and explicitly historical look at the experience of past imperial powers, always with an eye towards the United States’ current “imperial” issues.”.

While I intend to attend as many of these as I can, sadly I will not be able to attend the next one because of schedule conflicts.

Since I am easily distracted, I used the excuse of the email to look at past meetings in the series, then looked at the materials from those lectures, then looked at web pages about the topics in the materials, and on and on.

One of the lectures talked about Constantine. Ah-ha, a truly significant figure in Christian history. In fact, I suspect an underestimated such figure. One of the acts that he did was to issue what was called the Edict of Milan in 313. This Edict legalized the worship of Christianity explicitly but the wording was actually an interesting expression of religious freedom. It was issued in the name of Constantinus, Constantine, and Licinius, emperors nominally of the East and West, an organization established by Diocletian before Constantine.

The quote below is from one of the lectures, the emphasis was from the original speaker.

“We, Constantinus and Licinius the Emperors, having met in concord in Milan and having set in order everything which pertains to the common good and public security, are of the opinion that among the various things which we preceived would profit men, or which should be set in order, the first was to be found in the vultivation of religion: we should therefore give both to Christians and to all others free facility to follow the religion which each may desire, so that by this means whatever divinity is enthroned in heaven may be gracious and favourable to us and to all who have been placed under our authority. Therefore we are of the opinion that the following decision is in accordance with sound and true reasoning: that no one who has given his mental assent to the Christian persuasion or to any other which he feels suitable to him should be compelled to deny his conviction, so that the Supreme Godhead (“Summa Divinitas”), whose worship we freely observe, can assist us in all things with his wonted favour and benevolence.”

To me, it sounds amazingly modern.