HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- Cantor Sharon Kunitz warned the women and girls gathered at Temple B’nai Sholom Monday night, April 2, 2012, up front: There is a reason why this night is different from all other nights.
In fact, her allusion to one of the four questions traditionally asked by the youngest child during the annual meal that celebrates the Passover feast and the escape of the Israelite slaves from Egypt, had a double meaning. Monday night’s seder, Passover service, was different because it was a re-telling of the ancient story of deliverance. And Monday night’s seder was different because it used a haggadah, a program, that gave voice to Moses sister Miriam’s experience of the Exodus.
“Be aware,” said Kunitz, formerly of Huntsville who is now cantor of Ohev Sholom in Harrisburg, Penn. “Don’t assume things will be as you are used to.”
So the journey of the Exodus was celebrated with a service that was itself a departure.
Miriam’s cup, rather than Elijah’s cup, was the empty wine glass on the table into which each woman poured a little water from her glass to remember how, according to legend, Miriam’s miraculous well followed the Israelites across the desert.
The names of Sarah, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel were mentioned, rather than their husbands Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The spaces in the scriptures where women’s stories are passed over, even as they were passed over during the census counts, became a space for the women to consider their own responsibility for leadership and service.
“May this sacred gathering of Jewish women herald the coming of a day that knows no pharaohs, that judges not by gender and that sees the final exodus of humanity from slavery,” a prayer in the haggadah put it.
“Dayeinu,” the women responded, “This will surely be enough!”
The dessert Passover, an annual event of the Temple Sisterhood, preceded the formal celebration of the week-long Passover, which begins at sundown tonight, April 6, 2012.