2025 Haggadah of the Inner Seder

[David Seidenberg]

Dear Chevra,

I've updated the Haggadah of the Inner Seder for 2025 and it is now
available on neohasid at:
https://neohasid.org/zman/pesach/InnerSeder/

It's also time to download or update your Omer counter app -- links to
the Google Play and iOS versions are here:
https://www.neohasid.org/omer/apps/

Among other things in the haggadah, here are two elements I feel will
add a lot to your seder prep and seder experience:

1) A kavanah (intentional prayer) for searching and removing chamets:

“All the chamets that is in my possession/r’shut, which I [did see or]
did not see and which I [did remove or] did not remove, let it be
nullified and let it become like the dirt of the earth/afra d’ar’a.”
(bracketed words are added in the morning, when you burn the chamets)
-- followed by this prayer:

"May we remember on this day that just as we do not own this chamets,
we do not own this Earth. May we recall that Adam, the human, is made
of afar min ha’adamah, soil, dirt from the ground, and that we belong
to the soil. May we cherish the soil that comes from millenia of rocks
breaking and life growing and decomposing. We too are “hewn from the
rock and dug from the mine” of Abraham and Sarah (Isaiah 51:1-2). And
so, may it be Your will, Adonai Eloheinu, that we give truth to Your
promise to Abraham, that his progeny would become “like the soil of
the earth, ka`afar ha’arets” (Genesis 13:16) – k`afra d’ar’a – and
that, like the soil, we may live to nourish all Life."

2) Adding hyssop/eizov/zaatar to the seder plate

Add hyssop (or a sprig of oregano or thyme if you cannot find hyssop)
alongside your karpas, to remember the connection both Jews and
Palestinians have to the land of the promise. For Jews, hyssop (eizov)
was used for purification, and for painting blood on the doorways
during the plague of the firstborn. For Palestinians, za’atar is a
symbol of steadfastness and an essential spice. Use the hyssop sprig
to remember the blood on the lintel that protected the firstborn, and
to remember that Palestinian and Israelite culture are rooted in the
same land, so that we can hope for a future where no children are
sacrificed to terror or to war.

You can say either of the next two paragraphs about the hyssop after
Rabban Gamiel's three things, or after eating the karpas:

The night of the last plague was also the night of the first seder.
During that seder, to venture out would risk meeting the angel of
death. It was an all night affair where each family was confined to
its house. If two families joined together, they had to stay together
overnight in one house. As it says, “Take the hyssop and dip it in the
blood and daub the lintel and the two doorposts. And you all will not
go out, no one, beyond the door of their house until morning. And YHVH
will pass through to strike down Egypt, and will see the blood on the
lintel…and YHVH will skip over the door and not let the destroyer come
in to strike down.” (Exodus 12:22-23)

Eizov zo al shum mah? This is because of the blood painted with hyssop
onto the doorpost that saved the Israelites in Egypt from the plague
that killed the firstborn, and because we share this symbol with the
Palestinian people, for whom it represents being steadfastly rooted in
the land. We imagine a time when none of our children will die because
of terror or war, and the whole land will be filled with peace and
justice.

3) This also happens to be the week after our family dog died, and so
I will add this: according to midrash (based on Exodus 11:7), the dogs
of Egypt were quiet while 1.2 million Israelites left Egypt, enabling
them to escape without a hitch. This is why the dogs were rewarded
with receiving non-kosher meat in Exodus 22:30. I will be finding a
place to add this to the haggadah after shabbat.

Shabbat shalom,

David Seidenberg