All Four (Are One), a prayer-poem for Passover by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat (Bayit, 2024)

Contributor(s):

Rachel Barenblat and Bayit: Building Jewish

Shared on:

6 April 2024 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories:

Magid

Tags:

Israeli–Palestinian conflict, 2023 Israel–Hamas war, Four Children, 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., Prayers as poems, English vernacular prayer, haggadah supplements

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 yetser 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.

“All Four (Are One)” was written by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat and first published on the website of Bayit: Building Jewish on 2 April 2024. Introducing the work, she writes, “Bayit’s Liturgical Arts Working Group is collaborating on a new offering for Pesaḥ 2024, which we hope to release on Monday April 8, just before Rosh Ḥodesh Nisan. As a foretaste of what’s coming, here’s one piece from that collection. Stay tuned for more new liturgy, poetry, and artwork coming soon.”

Source(s)

All Four (Are One) (credit: Rachel Barenblat, Bayit- Building Jewish, 2024, license: CC BY-SA)

Notes[+]

Notes
1	The Talmud shares a parable that when the “evil impulse” was imprisoned, no eggs were laid – no generativity was possible (Yoma 69b).
2	Find “Rabbi’s Corner – April 2024: Free, Together,” by Rabbi David Markus (Congregation Shir Ami, 1 April 2024).

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“All Four (Are One), a prayer-poem for Passover by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat (Bayit, 2024)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Rachel Barenblat

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat (a/k/a Velveteen Rabbi) serves Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams, MA. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is author of five volumes of poetry, among them 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia, 2011) and Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda, 2018). A leader in Jewish Renewal (former co-chair of ALEPH, now a senior builder at Bayit: Your Jewish Home) she resides in western Massachusetts. She has blogged as the Velveteen Rabbi since 2003.

Bayit: Building Jewish

Bayit: Building Jewish (formerly, Bayit: Your Jewish Home) was founded in December 2017 by a group of rabbis and lay leaders seeking to become a collaboration engine for building "a radically inclusive and enlivening Judaism for all ages and stages. We aim to give you tools for building the Judaism that you yearn for, renewing Judaism so that your Judaism can renew you."

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17