A belated Happy Passover to those who celebrated this weekend! I spent the first seder at my aunt and uncle’s (who I learned are readers of GWP!) and the second at a dear friend’s dear parents’ house. Among the attendees at the latter was an Iraqi refugee, peace activist, and school teacher who arrived in New York from Baghdad about 8 months ago. I’ll call her S.

My friend’s dad is a linguist (and also a blogger!), and we asked the 4 questions in 7 different languages. Marco read them in Spanish, and S. read them in Arabic. I felt very verklempt at the whole thing, and proud to be part of a tradition that requires us to invite people who aren’t Jewish to the seder, in the spirit of being “welcoming to the stranger in your midst”. May this season usher in a time of renewal, rejeuvenation, and true freedom for all who remain in chains, whether enslavement be internal, external, or both.