Cups of Hope

by Jill Maidhof

Last week I was a bit stymied. The Jewish Journeys group I facilitate was scheduled to explore the unit Adding New Insights and Meaning to the Passover Seder, yet there was not a woman in the group who hadn’t participated in at least 40 Passover meals. What could I share with these sage veterans that they didn’t already know??

It hit me that the word seder means “order” and reflects our Jewish love of regularity. Consider the days of creation; the name of our prayerbook, siddur, derived from the same Hebrew root; the fact that Sukkot takes place exactly six full moons after Passover and the Israeli response to the greeting “How are you?” — Kol b’seder—everything’s in order.

Wouldn’t that be nice. But as Rabbi Beth Nadith has written:

In the days and weeks after October 7 th , chaos swirled… [and] the answer to the simple question of “How are you?” has moved from a polite platitude to impossible and intractable puzzle. I found, in those early weeks that my only possible answer to that question was “Shattered.”

Shattered — the complete lack of order — was how the women in my group would be coming to Chai Mitzvah this month. We would need to relate that feeling to the seder, yet I wanted the women to leave with a more positive feeling. I was inspired by the words of Mishkan Tefillah, the Reform siddur promising that God’s light could become a catalyst, first for Order and then for Hope.

So we talked about what felt shattered in our lives and then used our hands to begin to heal. As the symbol of hope at the seder table is the Elijah’s cup, we accepted a broken ceramic mug.

Carefully, lovingly, we put our cups of hope back together…

Carefully, lovingly, we put our cups of hope back together with glue and gold paint and in the process shared what we would say about them during our Passover gatherings. Each of us felt that despite everything, we would choose to hope, because that’s what we as Jews do. We did it after the destruction of our temples, after the pogroms and the expulsions, and we will do it after the tragedy in the Middle East and the widespread antisemitism in the United States. And we will not just hope. We will accept the reality around us and participate in its tikkun — repair. As Rabbi Steven Sager z”l would say, we will “Go out and do small, great things.”

May you complete a safe and joyous Passover with family and friends. And may you never lose hope!