What’s money got to do with Passover? Like the Haggadah from which guests read to retell the story of Exodus, this Ha-Guide-ah emphasizes the story of freedom from the way most of us think about money. You don’t have to be Jewish to celebrate and learn from this inspiring approach to the festival of freedom that the Passover Seder celebrates. You will follow the same ritual order of a Passover Seder as you are guided from a slave mentality towards money to a mentality of freedom. The Seder becomes an opportunity for bringing together people from all backgrounds and cultures to experience Passover, and to approach the social justice of economics as a larger community.
Gorgeous and inspiring. You did a great job…It’s a beautifully conceived and illustrated Haggadah. Ruth Broyd Sharone
Lauren,
You’re a person I admire and feel honored to know. Your energy, intelligence, and commitment to interfaith connections is a gift to all of us. ZinnHouse is an inspiration. Thanks especially for this year’s Passover Haggadah: Freedom from Money. Our family used it and found that it was a unique way of approaching our holiday tradition and provided for fresh discussions about modern day enslavement. Do not hesitate to use this thank you note as an endorsement of Lauren Zinn and ZinnHouse.
Warm Regards, Dan Hollander
It’s worth reading this article as it relates to Passover: Freedom from Money.
In The Secret Shame of the Middle Class (the cover story in the May 2016 issue of The Atlantic), Neal Gabler makes the connection between our country’s current obsession over immigration and our avoidance over what he argues is a root cause behind the emotion, namely, our relationship to money. In Gabler’s words,
We are [financially] impotent.
And while the affliction is primarily individual and largely hidden from public view, it has perhaps begun to diminish our national spirit. People want to feel, need to feel, that they are advancing in this world. It is what sustains them… But people increasingly do not feel that way… I suspect our sense of impotence in the face of financial difficulty is not only a source of disillusionment, but also a source of the anger that now infects our national politics, an anger that gets displaced onto undocumented immigrants…because we are unable or unwilling to articulate its true source…We seem to be…at the point where simmering financial impotence explodes into political rage.
Yes, we need to pay attention to immigration and we need to fight for immigrants’ rights especially in this political climate. We also need to approach other aspects of the problem. Our resistance to do so is a form of slavery. Facing it is how we begin to free ourselves. When 47% of respondents to a survey say they would have a hard time raising $400 in an emergency, the topic deserves national attention. We may need to redefine the American dream, change our spending habits, regulate banks, create new economic models, and/or transform the way in which we think of money. But we won’t know until we start talking.
This Passover Ha-Guide-ah is an opportunity to start the conversation, raise awareness, and educate ourselves. People of any faith and none can use this Pa$$over Guide to broach the subject, to gradually unlock the financial chains that bind us. For the freedom to talk about money, use this Pa$$over Guide. And let’s hope that Next Year, we won’t have to. (This Guide includes Leader’s Notes as well as instructions for setting up a Seder.)