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+====== Tikkun Passover 2009 Supplement in Plain Text ======
+Some folks have had problems with the font size on the 2009 Passover Supplement.  The original is from [[http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/seder_2009]].  Below is a version converted to plain text with acroread and then reformatted in emacs.  Use it if you find it useful.
+ --- //[[priestdo@cs.vassar.edu|Greg Priest-Dorman]] 2009/04/06 09:53//
+^{{people:priestdo:tips:tikkun.txt|Download tikkun.txt}}|
+<file>
+A Passover Seder
+Haggadah Supplement
+For Ethically Sensitive Jews and our non-Jewish allies.
+(You don’t have to be Jewish to create or attend a Seder—or to adopt
+the approach to spiritual reality embodied in this text).
+by Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, Tikkun Magazine and Rabbi, Beyt
+Tikkun Synagogue (which meets in both S.F. and Berkeley. More info:
+www.beyttikkun.org)
+This text is not meant to be a replacement for but a supplement to the
+traditional Haggadah. Feel free to make copies of this to use at any
+seder you attend, or to transform this in ways that work best for you!
+AS WE SIT AT THE SEDER TABLE:
+Seventy-eight percent of American Jews voted for Barack Obama in 2008,
+and a majority of non-Jewish Americans joined them. The message was
+clear: • end the war in Iraq and let our troops come home • end the
+war on the poor and the environment • stop favoring the rich and
+corporate interests.
+Our Seder celebrates the first liberation struggle of our people,
+overcoming slavery and proclaiming to the world that the “way things
+are” is not the only way things can be. In the face of oppression, we
+proclaimed to the Pharoah’s empire that there is a God (YHVH) who is
+the Force of Healing and Transformation in the world—the force that
+makes possible the transformation from “what is” to “what ought to
+be.”
+At our Seder tonight we celebrate the steps we’ve taken toward
+liberation. We look at where we are as a people and as human beings in
+our struggle to build a world of freedom and peace for all.
+We rejoice together at the election of an African American as
+President!
+But we are concerned about the outcome of the global meltdown of our
+economic and political system. We are now experiencing the results of
+decades of materialism and selfishness. Too many Americans closed
+their eyes to the suffering of those who have been living in poverty,
+even in the midst of American affluence. Now the suffering is
+spreading to the rest of us.
+The American economic system can create prosperity, but also
+cultivates greed, fraud, and a selfish “looking-outfor- number-one”
+mentality. This offends Jewish values, and has hurt our souls—even if
+we ignored these spiritual and psychic costs while the system was
+providing material goodies for many of us.
+The media, corporations, and their friends in government urged us to
+translate our spiritual and intimacy needs into consumption. This
+worked for some but produced alienation, loneliness, widespread
+emotional depression and a huge global anger at our society from
+others around the world. With individualism tearing down communities
+and teaching the ethos of “looking out for number one,” some people
+even turned to various religious fundamentalisms as a way to resist
+the global ethos of capitalism. These fundamentalisms cannot be
+defeated by our insistence on the value of democracy and human
+rights—not unless we simultaneously recognize and address what has
+been appealing in these old-time religions: their insistence that
+there is a hunger for meaning and purpose in life that cannot be
+achieved by material accumulation or endless new technologies, and
+that people hunger for loving community and connection to the mystery
+and majesty of the universe as much as for money or power or sexual
+conquests.
+We do not want a return to the economic arrangements of the past few
+decades. The false equation of “progress” with the accumulation of
+material goods and endless new technologies produced a global
+environmental crisis as an orgy of consumption destroyed much of the
+life support system of the planet. Only a fundamental transformation
+of the ethical and spiritual foundation of our economic and political
+order can save humanity and the planet in the 21st century. Developing
+this new vision is the task for spiritual progressives from every
+religious background.
+Many progressive Jews are finding the ethical and spiritual foundation
+for this transformation in the Jewish tradition. Jewish values support
+generosity, caring for others, and loving the stranger, while
+rejecting the extreme individualism, alienation and loneliness that
+accompanies the dominant ethos of American society.
+At our Seder tonight we challenge Western societies to adopt specific
+economic programs that flow from these Jewish values: • A National
+Bank that gives loans without charging interest • A legal system based
+on the “obligation to care” for each other, not just look out for
+“number one” • An economy that prescribes a sabbatical year for
+everyone (the same year—the whole society taking off one year to not
+produce, but instead to focus on what we as a human race want to
+accomplish in the next six years) • A Global Marshall Plan as an
+extension of the Torah’s notion of a tithe • Single payer universal
+health care • Unrestricted immigration • Protection of workers’
+rights.  Unfortunately, we as Jews also have to face a rather
+troubling reality. Within our own community these wonderful Jewish
+ethical values have too often been ignored. Too many prominent Jews
+have followed the narrow path of self interest.
+Similarly, Israel, which describes itself as “the State of the Jewish
+people,” has failed to embody the highest values of the Jewish
+tradition in the way that it treats our brothers and sisters the
+Palestinians. The human rights violations and the slaughter of
+Palestinians in Gaza, the seizing of Arab lands, the imprisonment of
+thousands of Palestinians without trial and the revelations by Israeli
+soldiers themselves of acts of brutality in Gaza and the West Bank are
+not isolated incidents. They are not the product of evil
+soldiers. They are the inevitable consequence of imposing and
+enforcing occupation.  We are not Jews who reject Israel or think it
+is the worst human rights violator on the planet! The U.S. role in
+Iraq, the genocide in Darfur, the repression of Buddhism in Tibet, and
+the extremes of repression in Iran and several Arab states are moral
+outrages of equal or greater proportion. Nor do we excuse the human
+rights violations and terrorism perpetrated by Hamas. Every act of
+violence against civilians must be vehemently opposed.  Tonight at our
+Seder table, and again on the High Holidays, we affirm that our
+special responsibility as Jews is to look critically at our own
+individual and communal behavior. It would be hypocritical to
+celebrate the freedom achieved from slavery while ignoring the ways
+that we as Americans and/or as Jews and/or as supporters of the state
+of Israel have been acting as Pharaoh to the Palestinian people.  We
+must not let our long history as victims of oppression or our anger at
+God for not having saved us from the Holocaust become the foundation
+for adopting the religion of our enemies: the religion that says that
+we can only trust in our power, our army, our ability to wipe out our
+enemies. This false God, parading under the title of “being
+realistic,” stands in stark contrast to the traditional voice of
+Jewish compassion, generosity, and caring for others.  The whole point
+of surviving as Jews is to challenge that religion of violence and
+domination and affirm instead the possibility of a world ruled by the
+logic of love and generosity. When we were utterly degraded as slaves,
+we experienced God as the power that was there redeeming us into
+freedom and sacred service. Now it is we who are powerful, and when
+our Jewish community aligns with the use of power in heartless and
+cruel ways against another people we feel deep grief. Our Torah says:
+“When you come into your land, do not oppress the stranger. Remember
+that you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” The Torah commands us
+positively: “Thou shalt love the stranger.”
+We must use our Seder to begin a conversation about how to create a
+broad social movement for peace, justice, and ecological
+sanity. President Obama needs to hear from those who are not trapped
+in the “inside-the-beltway” logic that dominates the national media
+and our national political leadership. If we do not make fundamental
+changes in our economic system and in our approach to foreign policy,
+we may find ourselves in deeper despair this time next year.
+Tonight at our Seder we will tell heroic stories of the past, but we
+must never imagine our past suffering gives us a moral pass to ignore
+the ethical distortions of the present moment. Our Seder must help us
+plan a way to transform the present. But we must do so with a strong
+dose of compassion, both for our own people and for the Palestinian
+people. We have co-created the current mess. We have both suffered
+from so much post-traumatic stress that sometimes people on both sides
+of this struggle fail to recognize the humanity of the other.
+As Jews, we must challenge our own people’s distorted vision and blend
+that challenge with deep love and caring, not just chastisements.
+Americans of every faith can make a huge contribution to this process
+by challenging the dominant vision in the West about how to achieve
+“homeland security”—namely through domination and power over
+others. Our Torah, and almost every other major religious and
+spiritual tradition, teaches a different message: that security can
+best be achieved through generosity, caring for others, and love. This
+revolutionary message must be given teeth, which is why we at Tikkun
+Magazine and Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in the Bay Area have formed the
+interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives and launched a campaign
+for a Global Marshall Plan that would have the U.S. and other advanced
+industrial societies dedicate between 2–5% of our Gross Domestic
+Product each year for the next twenty to once and for all end global
+poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, and inadequate
+health care, and to repair the global environment (details on this
+plan and on how to join us are at
+www.spiritualprogressives.org). Rather than attempt to rebuild an
+economic system that has been destroying the environment and
+encouraging an ethos of selfishness, our goal as spiritual
+progressives is to build a new global economy based on ancient
+spiritual values of love, kindness, generosity and caring equally for
+the well-being of everyone on the planet. That this kind of miracle
+can happen, that what everybody thought was impossible can suddenly
+become possible, because there is a power in the universe that is the
+power of love and transformation, this is what we experienced in Egypt
+and what we are seeking to enliven within ourselves by creating this
+Seder. We see that beyond the self, beyond family and country, we are
+part of the unfolding and evolution of consciousness in the universe,
+and we celebrate and recommit ourselves to that Force of Healing and
+Transformation.
+So let’s now close our eyes. Can you see the universe and your place
+in it? Affirm now your role as partner with God in the healing and
+transformation of all that is. The Seder can also be a time to do
+“tikkun” (to heal and transform parts of ourselves and our society).
+KIDDUSH
+We are gathered here tonight to affirm our continuity with the
+generations of Jews who kept alive the vision of freedom in the
+Passover story. For thousands of years, Jews (and our non-Jewish
+allies) have affirmed this vision by participating in the Passover
+Seder. We not only remember the Exodus but actually relive it,
+bringing its transformative power into our own lives.
+The Hebrew word for Egypt, mitzrayim, means “narrow straits.”
+Traditionally, mitzrayim has been understood to mean a spiritual
+state, the “narrow place” of confusion, fragmentation, and spiritual
+disconnection. Liberation requires us to embrace that which we have
+been taught to scorn within ourselves and others, including the
+split-off parts from our own consciousness that we find intolerable
+and that we project onto some “evil Other.” The Seder can also be a
+time to reflect on those parts of ourselves.
+Israel, according to the Torah, left Egypt with “a mixed multitude.”
+The Jewish people began as a multicultural mélange of people attracted
+to a vision of social transformation. What makes us Jews is not some
+biological fact, but our willingness to proclaim the message of those
+ancient slaves: (Say Together) The world can be changed, we can be
+healed.
+Blessing over the first cup of wine.
+KARPAS
+The saltwater on our table traditionally represents the tears of the
+Israelite slaves. The green vegetables we dip in the water suggest the
+possibility of growth and renewal even in the midst of grief.
+The greens on the table also remind us of our commitment to protect
+the planet from ecological destruction.  Instead of focusing narrowly
+on what we may “realistically” accomplish in today’s world, we must
+refocus the conversation on what the planet needs in order to survive
+and flourish. We must get out of the narrow place in our thinking and
+look at the world not as a resource, but as a focus for awe, wonder,
+and amazement. We must reject the societal story that identifies
+success and progress with endless growth and accumulation of
+things. Instead we will focus on acknowledging that we already have
+enough; we need to stop exploiting our resources and instead care for
+the earth.
+Dip the greens in saltwater and say your own personal blessings for
+the earth.
+FOUR QUESTIONS: THE ADULT VERSION
+Discuss as a group or in pairs at the Seder table:
+. Egypt, mitzrayim in Hebrew, comes from the word tzar: the “narrow
+place,” the constricted place. In what way are you personally still
+constricted? Are you able to see yourself as part of the unity of all
+being, a manifestation of God’s love on earth? Are you able to
+overcome the ego issues that separate us from each other? Can you see
+the big picture, or do you get so caught in the narrow places and
+limited struggles of your own life that it’s hard to see beyond your
+personal struggles? What concrete steps could you take to change that?
+. Do you believe that we can eventually eradicate wars, poverty, and
+starvation? Or do you believe that no one really cares about anyone
+but themselves, and that we will always be stuck in some version of
+the current mess? Or do you think that such a belief is itself part of
+what keeps us in this mess? If so, how would you suggest we spread a
+more hopeful message and deal with the cynicism and self-doubt that
+always accompanies us when we start talking about changing the world?
+. What experiences have you had that give you hope? Tell about some
+struggle to change something—a struggle that you personally were
+involved in—that worked. What did you learn from that?  4. When the
+Israelites approached the Sea of Reeds, the waters did not split. It
+took a few brave souls to jump into the water. Even then, the waters
+rose up to their very noses, and only then, when these brave souls
+showed that they really believed in the Force of Healing and
+Transformation (YHVH), did the waters split and the Israelites walk
+through them. Would you be willing to jump into those waters today—for
+example by becoming an advocate for nonviolence or for the strategy of
+generosity and the Global Marshall Plan? Would you go to speak about
+this to your elected representatives? To your neighbors? To your
+coworkers? To your family?  MAGEED (TELL THE STORY):
+Tell the story of the Exodus, and identify the Pharaohs in your life
+today.
+Blessing over the second cup of wine.
+We are descended from slaves who staged the first successful slave
+rebellion in recorded history. Ever since, our people has kept alive
+the story of liberation, and the consciousness that cruelty and
+oppression are not inevitable “facts of life,” but conditions that can
+be changed. Because God makes possible the tikkun (healing and
+transformation) of the world, reality is enough. Dayenu—it is enough.
+THREE SYMBOLS OF PASSOVER
+PESACH (the Bone or for vegetarians, the Pascal Beet): Our Seder plate
+includes a symbol of the ancient Passover sacrifice, which was brought
+each year to the Temple in Jerusalem. The Hebrew word for sacrifice is
+korban, which comes from the root meaning “near” or “close.” What
+could bring you closer to your highest spiritual self?
+MATZAH: The Torah tells us that the Israelites had to take the
+uncooked dough with them, “For they had prepared no provisions for the
+way.” Symbolically, the matzah reminds us that when the opportunity
+for liberation comes, we must seize it, even if we do not feel fully
+prepared-indeed, if we wait until we feel prepared, we may never act
+at all.  If you had to jump into such a struggle tomorrow morning,
+what would you have to leave behind? The current global economic
+meltdown may be precisely such a moment. Are you ready to leave the
+slavery of our current economic system?
+The matzah also stands in contrast to chametz (Hebrew for the
+expansive yeast that makes bread rise), which symbolizes false pride,
+absorption in our individual egos, and grandiosity.
+MARROR (the Bitter Herbs): The suffering of the Jews in Egypt has been
+matched by thousands of years in which we were oppressed as a
+people. Our insistence on telling the story of liberation and
+proclaiming that the world could be and should be fundamentally
+different has angered ruling elites. These elites often tried to
+channel against the Jews the anger that ordinary people were feeling
+about the oppression in their own lives. But Jews are not the only
+ones to have suffered oppression and violence. We think of the
+genocide against native peoples all around the world, including in the
+United States. We think of the enslavement of Africans, and the
+oppression of Armenians, homosexuals, women, immigrants and many
+others. Yet, tonight it is appropriate for us to focus also on the
+suffering of the Jewish people, and to affirm our solidarity with
+victims of anti-Semitism through the ages. Anti-Semitism still
+persists in our own time in the use of double standards in the
+judgment of Jews, in acts of violence against Jews, and in refusing to
+acknowledge the history of Jewish suffering as equal to the suffering
+of other victims of oppressive social regimes in Christian, Muslim,
+and some secular societies, as well. Meanwhile, we Jews need to
+acknowledge the ways that such suffering has at times distorted our
+consciousness and made it hard to fully grasp the pain others feel. We
+must evolve A GLOBAL JUDAISM that compassionately embraces the Jewish
+people and all other peoples.
+THE MEAL
+The Haggadah says, “Let all who are hungry come and eat.”
+Traditionally, this is understood to mean not only literally feeding
+the hungry, but also offering spiritual sustenance to those in
+need. Both must go hand in hand. We live in a society of unprecedented
+wealth, yet we turn our backs on the hungry. Even the supposedly
+liberal and progressive political leaders are unwilling to champion
+any program to seriously address world hunger and homelessness.
+There is also a deep spiritual hunger that must be fed. Though the
+cynical proclaim that “those who accumulate the most toys win,” our
+tradition teaches that money, power, and fame cannot sustain us. Our
+spiritual tradition teaches us to be present to each moment; to
+rejoice in all that we are and all that we have been given; to
+experience the world with awe, wonder, and radical amazement; and to
+recognize that we already have enough and are enough.
+Not just during the Seder, but also at every meal, it is incumbent
+upon us—the Jewish tradition teaches—to talk words of Torah, to study
+some section of our holy books, or to in other ways make God feel
+present at our table. Try this every night as you eat: bring God and
+God’s message of love, generosity, peace, social justice, ecological
+sanity, and caring for others into every meal that you eat.
+Enjoy the meal. Following the meal, say a blessing expressing thanks
+to God for the food and by expressing a commitment to do what you can
+to redistribute food on this planet so that everyone will have
+enough. Drink the third cup of wine.
+WELCOMING THE POSSIBILITY OF THE MESSIANIC AGE
+We open the door for Elijah—the prophet who heralds the coming of the
+Messiah and a world in which all peoples will coexist
+peacefully—acknowledging the Image of God in one another. To deny the
+possibility of fundamental transformation, to be stuck in the pain of
+past oppression, or to build our religion around memories of the
+Holocaust and other forms of suffering is to give the ultimate victory
+to those who oppressed us. To testify to God’s presence in the world
+is to insist on shifting our focus from pain to hope, and to dedicate
+our energies to transforming this world and ourselves. (All together
+recite): We still believe in a world based on love, generosity, and
+openheartedness.  We continue to affirm the Unity of All Being.
+Now let us build together a communal vision of what messianic
+redemption would look like.
+Close your eyes and let some picture of this appear in your
+minds. Then, open your eyes and share with others
+your picture of the world we want to build together.
+Blessing over the fourth cup of wine.
+Sing songs of liberation!
+Want to be part of a Judaism that shares the values articulated in
+this Haggadah supplement? You can:
+. JOIN Beyt Tikkun Synagogue. Come to our annual retreat and/or High
+Holiday services. There may even be a few remaining seats at our (2nd
+night) Passover Seder April 9 at the Noe Valley Ministry in S.F. if
+you join as members. Details at www.BeytTikkun.org. 415-575-1432
+. Come to our course, GLOBAL JUDAISM: A re-introduction to a Judaism
+of Love and Generosity.  Taught by Rabbi Michael Lerner. Fri. evening
+May 1 to Sun. afternoon May 3. Details at www.beyttikkun.org
+. Subscribe to Tikkun Magazine at www.tikkun.org If you are not
+Jewish but wish to bring these values into your Christian, Muslim,
+Buddhist, or other spiritual communities, or if you are a (spiritual
+but not religious) atheist please join our interfaith Network of
+Spiritual Progressives at www.spiritualprogressives.org
+q YES! I’ll help you spread this message. I’ll send a tax deductible
+donation of
+q $1,000 q $500 q $300 q $180 q $120 q $80 q $50 q $25 q
+Other________________
+or I’ll enclose my credit card info and you can bill it for
+$____________one time; or $____________each
+month for one year. Or, I’ll call your office at 510-644-1200 to
+donate that way.
+Tikkun & Beyt Tikkun Synagogue
+Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CA 94704 510-644-1200 Shul@tikkun.org
+Sanchez, San Francisco, CA 94114 415-575-1432
+</file>