The key to the longevity of the Jewish Seder is the inclusion of the children. The youngest child present is required to ask a number of questions that allow the adults to pass the story of the Exodus on to the next generation. If you aren’t including the children in the celebration, you are missing the point. And yes, that includes letting them pull the triggers on the guns. Let them ask questions, and give answers freely – which means you have to know the story well enough to answer anything they might ask.
- We drink tea with salt added, to remember the Boston Tea Party and the cost of not keeping a watchful eye on our freedoms.
- We eat a meal of wild-foraged and home-grown foods, to remember the way the founders fed themselves when blockade cut off foreign trade.
- We drink rum, to remember the Triangle Trade and its consequences.
- We read the story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal at Mount Carmel, to remember the power of standing up to a tyrant with God at your back.
- We read the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (Jefferson and Dickinson, 1775) to remember why we fight and under what circumstances.
- We watch Gettysburg to remember the consequences of compromise.
- We shoot targets at no more than fifty yards, to remember the scale of the battlefields and what it meant to hold fire until you see the whites of their eyes.
- We fly the Betsy Ross flag, to remember our birth as a nation.