Prepare a Seder Reading (Teachers' Guide)

Objectives

• Relate the Passover story to modern slavery.
• Provide students with an opportunity to personally relive the Exodus.
• Create material for students to use as their contribution to the family seder.

Lesson

• Introduce the concept of reliving the redemption. As it says in the Haggadah,

"In each generation, every individual should feel as though he or she had actually been redeemed from Mitzrayim, as it is said: "You shall tell your children on that day, saying, 'It is because of what Adonai did for me when I went free out of Mitzrayim.'"

• Discuss how we can relive the redemption. Some answers may include: conducting a seder, retelling the story, eating special foods.
• Introduce information about modern slavery. Use this information sheet and material from iabolish.com.
• Discuss how Passover relates to modern slavery. How are they the same or different? Do Jews have a special obligation to combat modern slavery? Refer to the texts below.
• Ask students to write a prayer or reading for their seder. Explain that Passover presents us with an opportunity to relive the Exodus by personally taking actions -- like those activities the class mentioned in #2 above. We can also take action to relive the Exodus, and act as the Torah prescribes, by calling attention to modern slavery and helping to end it. Write a prayer or reading which expresses our hope that slavery be abolished - in our time. Feel free to write in a style that you're most comfortable with, such as a prayer to God, or in the voice of Moses to future generations, or as a plea from a modern slave.