Dear Friends -

Welcome to "Seder Preparation" for the year 2014.

As I write these words on Friday, March 28, I find myself just dipping back into the sea of the Seder, the Haggadah, and Passover. Actually, I spent several hours this afternoon looking through notes and anecdotes and lessons and sermons from Passovers past. I myself am still searching for the unique way in which I want to approach Passover 2014.

For now, I have two suggestions.

First, visit the other tabs on this website to see the wealth of material already available. Readings, games, and ways to involve children and adults of all ages are everywhere on our Sinai website. Browse through the material and find what appeals.

Secondly, please read the passage at the bottom of this message. It comes from one of Israel's greatest poets. Yehuda Amichai was a man of great passion and depth. Read this memory of his father. I can see it being used at several points in your 2014 Seder. People will respond to it very strongly.

I will have more to add to the website next week.

Shalom, Rabbi Mark Shapiro

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The Ten Commandments PLUS Two
My father was God and didn't know it.
He gave me the Ten Commandments not in thunder and not in anger, not in fire and not in a cloud, but gently and with love.
He added caresses and tender words, "would you" and "please."
And chanted "remember" and "keep" with the same tune, and pleaded and wept quietly between one commandment and the next: Do not take God's name in vain, please don't bear false witness against your neighbor.
And he hugged me tight and whispered in my ear, "Do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not kill."
And he lay the palms of his wide-open hands on my head with the Yom Kippur blessing: "Honor, love, that your days may be long upon this earth."
And my father's voice was white like his hair.
Later, he turned his face to me for the last time, as on the day he died in my arms, and said, "I would like to add two more commandments."
The eleventh commandment, "Do not change." And the twelfth commandment, "You must change."
So spoke my father, and he turned and walked away, disappearing into his strange distances.
Yehuda Amichai