When you stop to think about it, the story of Passover is really quite basic:
 

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt but the Lord our God brought us forth with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm.

• Moses' compassion for the suffering of his people in slavery.
• Moses' outrage over a taskmaster beating a fellow Hebrew.
• A mother's selfless risk in saving her infant's life, placing him in a basket and floating him on the river into the hands of a total stranger.
• Pharaoh's arrogant determination to enslave and engage in the murder of helpless children.
• Human beings believing that they can take on God.
• And how about the Pharaoh's attitude toward the plagues and his hardening heart?

I suppose at the heart of Passover we always revisit the triumph of good over evil. It's a lesson ever relevant-it's at the heart of the same new story. The human spirit was created by God to be free and liberated from slavery of every sort. And September 11, 2001 only underscores that indelible reality all the more. Didn't you feel it as you read the familiar words of the Haggadah and as you sang the beloved songs and melodies during your Seder observance? Tyrants are still to be overcome! Every generation must earn its freedom. Yes, Passover is always relevant.

The Same New Story! I want to briefly share with you tonight just a few new customs, but first a few old, but illuminating interpretations on the Seder's text. I do so out of a conviction that too many of us perform the rituals of the Seder without fully absorbing their significance.

The power of Passover is ultimately not in the rituals but in the message, and the message is brought home by the text.

Did you know that some scholars explain that the custom of eating hard-boiled eggs on Passover is a reference to the nature of the Jewish people and our capacity to survive? For an egg differs radically from all other types of food. With all other foods, excessive boiling softens them. The more an egg is cooked, however, the harder it becomes. It is symbolic of the character and nature of our people: oppression serves but to stiffen our resolve to live and to flourish.

In another portion of the Haggadah text, we are taught:

Why does the observance of matzah, which is a reminder of freedom and redemption, PRECEDE observance of the bitter herb, which is a reminder of bondage? After all, the natural sequence of events would put slavery before freedom. But in the Seder, we say the blessing over the matzah before reciting the one over the bitter herb. Why? To teach us that only after our people had had a taste of freedom did they begin to understand and feel the true weight of the bitterness of slavery. A slave in bondage becomes habituated to his condition and is not aware of his desperate situation; it's only after a slave becomes a free person that he or she can understand the bitterness of slavery and the high value of freedom.

But here's another interpretation from the Haggadah.

One may also understand from the eating of moror (the bitter herb, a reminder of slavery) after eating matzah (which is, of course, a reminder of freedom) that a person must recall evil times even when one is prosperous and happy; one must recall the bitterness of slavery even while one lives in freedom. We must not follow the example of those who, after they become great and prosperous, forget the days of their misery and servitude and fail to feel the pain of others.

I also like this interpretation of the burning bush, which called Moses at the very beginning to his servanthood to his people. You will remember that Moses was a shepherd of his father-in-law, Jethro's, flocks. And one day he came upon this bush that burned but did not burn up. The rabbis ask, "Why did God show Moses a burning bush?" And their answer? "God wanted Moses to understand that though the Israelites in Egypt might have appeared like a bush of dry thorns, empty of pious deeds and of possibility, nevertheless, a fire of holiness was burning within their spirit." This was the people God had chosen and with whom God would keep faith in an everlasting covenant.

Okay, enough of the heavy stuff. How about some creative Passover innovations? Here's a suggestion that I like. Have the guests read or paraphrase their parts of the Passover story with an accent of a well-known character. Perhaps have one person read imitating President Bush or another in a John Wayne voice or someone else as Scarlett O'Hara or Mae West or even Bill Clinton.

We can also dramatize some of the challenges and problems we Jews have had to face through the centuries in the course of celebrating our Seders. Leave the holiday candles on the table, but turn off the lights and make everyone hold their Haggadahs in their laps, but hidden low. Spanish Jews of the 13^th century used to have to conceal their Passover celebration to avoid arrest and torture during the years of the Inquisition.

And how about this suggestion? Serve white wine for one of the four cups of wine at the Seder. Why? Because that way we can explain how Jews of the Middle Ages had to stop using red wine when the communities in which they lived accused the Jews of drinking the blood of Christian children at their Seders. The ideal opportunity to teach about the Blood Libel.

Someone even suggested making a sign that reads something like, "I was here and I knocked. Where were you? Signed, Your friend, Elijah." Hang the sign outside the front door after all the guests have arrived, and let the children go to the door at the proper time to open it for Elijah and find Elijah's note written to them.

Here's my favorite, compliments of a California Rabbi colleague, the distinguished Harold Schulweis. He tells of having adopted a most fascinating Passover Seder custom which was first introduced by the 19^th century Rabbi, Naftali of Ropshitz. Elijah's cup, symbolizing the coming of the Messiah, is left unfilled. But before the door is opened and Elijah is welcomed at the Seder, the empty cup of Elijah is passed around the table.

Everyone, man, woman and child, carefully pours a portion from his or her own wineglass into that large empty cup while the melody of Eliahu Ha-navi is sung. When the cup is returned to the leader of the Seder, the leader lifts up the cup and recites the rabbinic statement: "Israel will not be redeemed except through its own efforts."

You see, Rabbi Naftali's ritual not only involves the participation of the Seder guests ceremonially, but theologically as well. Redemption does not come as a result of waiting. Belief in the Messiah or longing for the arrival of the messianic age will never be a substitute for active involvement. Surely our sages meant no slight to God when they expressed their conviction that divine power is revealed through a living people's exercise of moral backbone and determination.

And so, we come full circle in telling "The Same New Story"!

The sin and insincerity of our own day-religious fanaticism, wanton terrorism and disregard for human life, the hardheartedness of the haves who have no regard for the have-nots and who treat "the stranger" with increasing contempt (have you seen the play about Matthew Shepherd?) and indifference-these plagues of our own day, my dear friends, will not be healed by means of prayer vigils by the well-meaning.

Our Jewish people has always been taught that God's power is most profoundly evoked, not through divine intervention, but rather by human beings who take upon themselves the responsibility for making God's will manifest through human events.

The cup of Elijah stands empty before us all. It will remain empty until we each give of our strength toward the fulfillment of the timeless promises of Passover for universal freedom, dignity, and well-being. No individual, no group or faith or nation by itself can succeed in filling the cup of Elijah, only together, as a human family understanding our common purposes and our mutual task, only together will the promise of Passover be at last fulfilled.