A Woman's Seder

 A Woman's Seder                                                                      

Our family held a seder last night and, in preparation, my husband, Barry, found a copy of the San Diego Women's Haggadah which I and five other women had written in 1980. After the first meeting with these women, I had gone home and felt inspired to write the following poem which was included in our finished product

A Woman's Seder

"It starts a week before,

Each drawer, each shelf, is stripped and scrubbed,

A rite performed each spring since Pharaoh forced

The chosen ones to flee before their bread could rise.

I wash a dish, streaked black from last years news

and filled with years of family seders;

And think of Miriam,

The woman who began

Our journey to the promised land.

Did she lament the flat and tasteless bread

She served her men?

Or did she know that we would share her deed

Each spring as we recall her exodus from bondage,

That has still to be complete?

As smells of spring and chicken soup mix pleasingly,

I peel an apple, chop the nuts, and sip the wine,

Remembering the bricks that stood between

Each ghetto girl and study of Torah.

The shank-bone roasts and fills the air

Within my modern home

With smells of sacrifice that women made

So that there would be seders every year.

I fill a dish with bitter herbs,

But feel no bitterness,

Because I know that each small task inks me

With every Hebrew Woman who prepared

a seder meal since G-d proclaimed that Jews

Should celebrate their freedom every year.