A Different Night
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This rich Haggadah enables Jews to connect with their tradition in deeply personal ways, while at the same time opening the tradition to Jews, showing it to be responsive and flexible. As I prepared for Pesach last year, this Haggadah taught me that our most important heritage is to question. It opened our Seder to deep and exciting discussions.
Rabbi Rachel Cowan, Reform
Director of Jewish Life Program, Nathan Cummings Foundation
Women's 
Resources
The Shifra and Puah Award
Al Axelrod, the Hillel rabbi at Brandeis University in the 1960's, established this annual award for non-violent resistance to tyranny. He named it after the midwives who resisted and outsmarted Pharoah and saved the Hebrew Infants from drowning (In Tel Aviv the maternity hospital is located at the intersection of Shifra and Puah street).
To whom would you give this award this year?
A good example for someone who deserved this award is Harriet Tubman, who escaped in 1849 from her plantation in Maryland with the help of the "Underground Railroad". Soon she became a major "conductor" bringing more than 300 slaves to freedom. Despite the high price on her head, her faith in God gave her the courage to persist and earn the nickname "Moses of her people".
Anne Frank: I still Believe
That's the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered.
It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us, too. I can feel the suffering millions - and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think it will come out all right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.
In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out. (Diary of Anne Frank, Amsterdam 1944)
The Egyptians' expressed purpose in enslaving Israel was to drastically cut their birth rate. The hard labor in the fields exhausted the slaves physically and spiritually. According to a Rabbinic midrash, it was the women who resisted the intent of the decree. They used their sexuality to arouse their husbands, and so re-ignite the fundamental will to life:
"When Israel performed hard labor in Egypt, Pharaoh decreed that the men must not sleep in their homes, so that they would not engage in sexual relations. R. Shimon bar Halafta said: What did the daughters of Israel do? They went down to draw water from the Nile and God would bring little fish into their jars. They cooked some of the fish and sold the rest, buying wine with the proceeds. Then they went out to the fields and fed their husbands. After eating and drinking, the women would take out bronze mirrors and look at them with their husbands. The wife would say "I'm prettier than you," and the husband would reply, "I'm more beautiful than you." Thus they would arouse themselves to desire and they would then "be fruitful and multiply."
Years later, when God told Moses to build a tabernacle in the desert, all Israel came to volunteer beautiful things. Some brought gold and silver. The women said, "What do we have, to donate to the tabernacle?" They took their bronze mirrors and brought them to Moses.
At first, Moses became angry and refused to accept the mirrors since their function is to arouse jealousy and sexual desire. God said to Moses: "Moses, do you dare scorn these mirrors? They are more precious to Me than all the other donations, because through these mirrors the women gave birth in Egypt to all these multitudes. Take them and make them into the bronze basin, with which the priests will purify themselves" (Tanhuma Pikudei 9).
For more about the 4 children, turn to our 4 children page in the Activity Center. For a commentary about this picture, click here.