Sylvia Cohen Family Learning Project's Virtual Haggadah

The staff, students and parents of the Sylvia Cohen Family Learning Project (our name while we are out here in the wilderness together) of Temple Ahavat Achim are proud to present this Virtual Haggadah for Pesach 2020. We know that many of our fellow congregants are without all of their families right now, and we wanted to make something that we could all have in common, something that was specifically ours to look at when we tell the Passover story this year.

This isn't a traditional Haggadah, but this isn't a traditional year*. Haggadah means "the telling" or "legend." We are using contemporary technology to tell our version of the ancient story of our people. Everything in the Passover seder (seder=order) is designed to get children to ask questions, to prompt The Telling. With the same kavanah (intention) with which we approach all our learning at Sylvia Cohen: together we read texts closely from Exodus together and then asked each other: what does this make you wonder about? What stands out for you here? Each student then asked their own questions and then created answers to those questions in the movies, stories and drawings you see in this book.

We dedicate it with ahava (love) to our kehilla (community) Temple Ahavat Achim.
Next year in Jerusalem, and barring that, at 86 Middle Street!

*We hope

The 4-7 grade asked this year: how did the Israelites become "gerim" or strangers (people without status) in Egypt? How did they go from being the family of the hero Joseph, son of Jacob, to becoming slaves to Pharaoh?

Erez and Solomon Boraks and Alex and Violet SteMarie asked: how did the Israelites become slaves? How did things change from enslaving the Israelites to the killing of the Israelite baby boys?

The Five Women who Saved Moses.
A midrash by Miriam Garrett-Metz

The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, saying, “When you deliver the Hebrew women look at the birthstool: if it is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.” The midwives, fearing God, did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live. The king was furious!

He ordered the midwives to speak to him at once. “Why have you disobeyed me? Why have you let the boys live?"

The worried midwives stole glances at each other under the king's powerful wrath and answered, “Because the Hebrew women are not like egyption women: they are vigorous. Before the midwife can come to them, they have given birth.” The midwives hid the fact that they were also afraid of God and did not want him to kill them. Pharaoh then established a new rule, “Every boy that is born you will throw in the Nile, but let every girl live.”

A week later a Jewish man then married a jewish woman, Jochebed, and months later had a baby boy. The parents were frightened but they still kept the baby boy for months until they had to give him up, so they put him in a basket and he floated away peacefully down the Nile. But Jochebed's daughter Miram had to make sure that the baby went safely down the river so she followed it and saw that the Pharaoh's daughter had found him. Miriam sighed with great relief and watched as the Pharaoh's daughter Batia seemed to take pity on her little brother asleep in the woven basket and notice that it was a Hebrew boy.

Then Miriam spoke. She said “Shall I go get you a hebrew nurse to take care of the baby for you?" The Pharaoh's daughter answered with a satisfied yes. So Miriam went home and called her mother to the Pharaoh's daughter. So she said to Jochebed “take this child and nurse it for me then I will pay your wages.” Years later the Pharaoh's daughter had two grown boys, one her biological son and one she drew out of the water whose name was Moses.