Passover
Story Stream
The Empty Chair April 17, 2025
In twilight’s glow as candles shine,We gather ‘round the Seder table, divine.With matzah flat and bitter herbs arrayed,We tell the tale of how our freedom was made.From Pharaoh’s bonds our ancestors fled,Across the parted sea, by Moses led.Tonight we...
A Psychedelic American Passover April 15, 2022
Harvey Wasserman has a new book, The People’s Spiral of U.S. History, which he began in 1970 and that he finally finished in 2022. Part rabble-rouser and part tummler, the finished product is a history book like no other. There will never be one like...
Welcome to the Haggadah April 23, 2021
In the Winter 1986 issue of Grand Street, Columbia University professor Edward Saïd took aim at progressive political theorist Michael Walzer’s Exodus and Revolution. Walzer’s book documented recurring references to the Israelites’ escape from Egypt ...
What the Exodus Tells Us About Free Will March 27, 2021
The following piece is an excerpt from “ The Telling: How Judaism's Essential Book Reveals the Meaning of Life” by Mark Gerson.In the story of Exodus, which recounts the Israelites’ flight to freedom, readers are told that the heart of the oppressive...
Passover and the Power of Jewish Continuity March 22, 2021
After hundreds of years of slavery, it is the Israelites’ final night in Egypt. They are ready to escape to freedom. Their leader, Moses, imparts a final piece of guidance, one that is also to serve as a lasting edict: He instructs them to tell their...
Redemption in Catalonia and Bosnia April 22, 2019
The most celebrated Passover haggadah in the world—probably the most famous medieval illustrated Hebrew manuscript, period—is the Sarajevo Haggadah. Written and illustrated in northern Spain in the first half of the 14th century, it first came to pub...
