Helah Cooper

Illustrations for my family’s passover seder

Adding to my mother, Ruth Howard and sister, Shifra Cooper’s version of the haggadah that they revise each year

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Celebrators of Passover have told this story each year from generation to generation. At our Seders, we started to look for different stories to tell as well or in its place, in order to ask: “How is this holiday meaningful to our to secular Jewish families, and to other friends sharing this celebration. Several years ago, we introduced a story about this place where we live:

“Wave after wave of the persecuted of other nations arrived, seeking sanctuary in the city – seeing it as a land of promise. No one told them that the city was built on lies and stolen land, that the earth was befouled and the waters poisoned. Gradually, some came to recognize that, in destroying the first people, they also harmed themselves and future generations and that they also were enslaved by a system that enriched a few and destroyed the land for all. They began to share the dream that this place could be transformed into a land of true promise, where all could live in dignity and freedom.”

- Victoria Freeman

And we continue to ask: what other stories need to be told? What is the value of telling the same story over and over, versus telling new ones? And In what ways is a Seder, or an adapted Seder, a good way to enter into these questions?

“It seems like a dismal conclusion that we cannot find certainty of knowledge or belief in a chaotic world. But a tolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty and the frank recognition of our ignorance has its rewards. In the first place, it leads to a more peaceful and tolerant world. In the second place, it makes possible those delightful and essential things: novelty and discovery. It is only when you have identified an area of ignorance and uncertainty that you become motivated to think a new thought, make a discovery, create a new art form or doing things in a new way.”

- Ian Howard

31st Mar 2018