Learning Library
Pesach calls us to enter the story: to see ourselves as having gone out from Egypt, and to allow the Seder’s themes to speak to our present moment. Since October 7th we have come to our tables each Spring off balance, many feeling some version of “This year truly is different from other years.” Once again, we face war, and with it a sharpened awareness of both the power and vulnerability of the Jewish people—and our own. What might matzah, scallions, and other elements of our seder(s) say to this moment? Join us to learn and discuss together new insights to bring to your Seder and your experience of Pesach this year.
Rabbi Mishael Zion, an educator and community entrepreneur, was the founding director of the Mandel Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture, where he currently serves as a faculty member dedicated to the leadership development of fellows and graduates in the fields of culture, media, and community in Israel. Mishael is the author of The Israeli Haggadah (2024) and Esther: A New Israeli Commentary (2019) and is the co-author of A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices (2007) and Halaila Hazeh: An Israeli Haggadah (2004), together with his father, Noam Zion. Born and raised in Jerusalem, Mishael is a founder of the Klausner Minyan, a partnership minyan in Talpiot, where he lives with his wife and four daughters. Mishael holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and Jewish thought from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and rabbinic ordination from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in New York. Mish has been faculty for the Wexner Foundation, Shalom Hartman, and has been a visiting scholar at the New York University School of Law and the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
