All Four (Are One)
Bayit’s Liturgical Arts Working Group is collaborating on a new offering for Pesach 2024, which we hope to release on Monday April 8 / just before Rosh Chodesh Nisan. As a foretaste of what’s coming, here’s one piece from that collection, written by R. Rachel Barenblat. Stay tuned for more new liturgy, poetry, and artwork coming soon.
All Four (Are One)
Today the Four Children are a Zionist,
a Palestinian solidarity activist, a peacenik, and
one who doesn’t know what to even dream.
The Zionist, what does she say? Two thousand years
we dreamed of return. “Next year in Jerusalem”
is now, and hope is the beacon we steer by.
The solidarity activist, what do they say?
We know the heart of the stranger. To be oppressors
is unbearable. Uplift the downtrodden.
The peacenik, what does he say? We both love this land
and neither is leaving. We’re in this together.
Between the river and the sea two peoples must be free.
And the one who doesn’t know what to even dream:
feed that one sweet haroset, a reminder that
building a just future has always been our call.
All of us are wise. None of us is wicked.
(Even the yetzer ha-ra is holy—without it
no art would be made, no future imagined.)
We are one people, one family. Not only
because history’s flames never asked what kind
of Jew one might be, but because
the dream of collective liberation is our legacy.
We need each other in this wilderness.
Only together can we build redemption.
R. Rachel Barenblat
No art would be made. Talmud shares a parable that when the “evil impulse” was imprisoned, no eggs were laid – no generativity was possible. (Yoma 69b) History’s flames never asked. See Free, Together, R. David Markus.
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, convener of the Liturgical Arts Working Group, is a founding builder at Bayit. She serves Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires as spiritual leader, is author of several volumes of poetry (most recently Crossing the Sea and Texts to the Holy), and has been blogging as the Velveteen Rabbi since 2003.
