Dear Kol Ami Community, Tomorrow night we begin the Passover holiday. For the next week, we will refrain from eating leavened bread products. We will dip parsley into salt water and taste the maror, the reminder of the bitterness of our servitude. Our Seder rituals will help us leave Egypt toward a new life, a life of freedom; a free people in our own land, the Promised Land of Israel.
As you gather around your holiday table take a few moments to appreciate those you love. Take a few moments to appreciate the freedoms we enjoy and the road ahead until we experience true liberation from the enslavements of our time.
As you recall and remember, that we, too, were once refugees from Egypt, I share with you this Passover supplement from the World Union of Progressive Judaism, our International Reform Jewish movement that has done so much for the Ukrainian Jewish refugees. A year of war in Ukraine has not lessened the need for our support of those who flee the violence and terror. Our Reform Jewish communities of the Ukraine have been on the front lines and it is taught in the Talmud in Shevuot 39a that it is our responsibility to care for them.
שכל ישראל ערבים זה בזה
Kol Yisrael Aravim ze bazeh; All Israel is responsible for one another.
Below is a reading of the four children of Ukraine. Use it in your seder to help us remember that our fellow Jews are still in trouble. Use it at your seder to get to know some of the members of our Reform community in Ukraine and see how their lives are affected. And consider a Passover offering of support for the World Union of Progressive Judaism's support of our Ukrainian Reform Jewish community.
May your Seder be delicious and filled with a spirit of hope. May your Passover be joyous and sweet. And may our prayers for a world redeemed be answered.
Rabbi Steinman and I wish you a Chag Sameach.
Congregation Kol Ami 1200 N La Brea WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA 90038
