Opening Doors: So That Seder Might Be Transformative, Not Performative

Reflection on Shefokh Hamatkha (Pour Out Your Wrath)

Let’s talk about opening doors.

After dinner and before Hallel, we rise to open the front door of our homes, and we recite: שפך חמתך אל הגוים אשר לא ידעוך —Pour out Your fury against the nations who do not know You . . . Pour out Your wrath on them and may Your blazing anger overtake them.

The message is tough—I’ve always found it dissonant both with the spirit of the celebration, and with my understanding of our Jewish tradition. Certainly, there are appearances in our tradition of a harsh and vengeful God, but much of my spiritual and religious life is a counter-testimony to that rage fueled reactivity. I seek connection to a loving and forgiving God, one who inspires us to walk in God’s ways through care, compassion, and commitment.

But this year, I cannot dismiss shefokh hamatkha as I have in years past. This year, I can relate to the vulnerability and desperation that must have inspired the liturgist—back in the 9th century—to write
this prayer. I still don’t share the sentiment, but I do understand it. Maybe you, too, see it a bit differently this year.

Shefokh hamatkha is a dark story—a story drenched in pain, and we are living through an era drenched in pain.

Perhaps I’ve been so distracted, in years past, by the dissonance of this prayer that I never realized the deeper problem with this dark story—it’s not just the sacralization of vengeance, retribution
in religious language in the heart of a religious ceremony. It’s the placement of those words, of that fever dream—a prayer for revenge spoken belly-full, couched between words of gratitude and praise.

Here’s the problem. Every Jew in every generation is called to see ourselves as though we, personally, left Mitzrayim, that narrow place, and began the long walk to freedom, to a place of possibility and expansiveness. The seder is structured to mimic that journey. We traverse sacred time following the trajectory of our ancestors: מַתְחִיל בִּגְנוּת וּמְסַיֵּם בְּשֶׁבַח —we begin in degradation, and we end in praise (Mishnah Pesahim 10:4).

Our story moves from pain to promise, not the other way around. In other words: there is no place for a revenge fantasy at the end of our seder, the celebration of our freedom.

But there is another door opening, one that occurs hours earlier in our seder, long before we eat, just before we begin telling our story. Then we rise, with our tables set and our wine glasses poured, to open the front door, but this time we say: כל דכפין ייתי וייכול All who are hungry, come and eat.

Think of it! Seder is an exercise in memory and spiritual mobility. We taste the bitter herbs to remember the heartlessness of Pharoah’s taskmasters. But we cannot begin to tell our story, let alone eat our meal, without recognizing that for others, even in our place and in our time, enslavement is no metaphor or abstract reality. And for those who have been blessed to traverse the darkness and make our way toward the light, the only responsible thing, the only human thing to do, is open our doors and invite in those who are still now where we once were.

All who are hungry, come and eat! This generous invitation is drawn from the example of Rav Huna, the rosh yeshiva of Sura. He was not only learned, but also full of grace. In Masekhet Taanit (20b), we read a series of extraordinary actions Rav Huna was known for in his time, culminating in the practice, before each meal, of opening his door and declaring: let all who are hungry come and eat!

It’s clear in the Gemara how extra-ordinary—how out of ordinary—Rav Huna’s behavior was. He was a giant of his generation. Even the great Rava admits: he’d never go that far. But when this tradition is incorporated into the Haggadah, it is not only those who are extraordinarily resourced, or extremely righteous or wise who say it, but every single one of us.

Now many commentators go to great length to explain that don’t worry . . . this is not meant to be taken literally—we’re not really inviting hungry people into our homes.

But we must know that there have been times in Jewish history when this directive was taken very seriously. Elie Wiesel writes (in his Haggadah) that in his small town, before the war, the Jews used to wander through town searching for strangers—the poor, the uprooted, the unhappy, the hungry—to come and sit at their table as treasured guests. Without them, they could not begin their meals.

This door opening sends a clear message: the great dream of Passover is not individual liberation, but collective liberation. Until all of us are free, none of us will truly be free. So all who are hungry, come and eat!

Now what happens when we open our door and bring a hungry person to our table? I mean we either literally invite them in, or we open our heart to bring the reality of their suffering to the table? Does that not change us? Does it not bring new significance to our own story? Does it not awaken a kind of gratitude for what we have, an awareness of the fragility of it all? A commitment to use our freedom to bring love, comfort, dignity to those who remain in the narrow straits?

This year, this question strikes me as more urgent than before.

It’s so hard to open our door to another person—or another people’s—heartache. I wonder how Rav Huna did it. How was he able to put aside his own desires and needs, his own sorrow, and open his door so graciously, again and again? In Megillah (27b), we are given a hint. This great sage was born into poverty. In fact, he was so poor that he once sold his belt to afford wine for kiddush on Shabbat, and was forced to hold his pants up with a rope. I have to believe that it was because he knew the ache of hunger, the humiliation of hunger, that he cultivated a heart so deeply generous toward others who were hungry.

Is the seder not designed to do to our hearts precisely what that childhood hunger did to Rav Huna’s? Thirty-six times in the Torah we are reminded to treat the stranger fairly, and generously, and even lovingly . . . because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. The whole point of the seder, arguably, is to
remind us that we know the heart of the stranger. To remind us of the bitterness of enslavement, and that first taste of freedom. That is our story—built into the Jewish collective consciousness over thousands of
years.

Open your doors, the tradition calls out to us. Open your hearts! All who are hungry, come and eat.

The careful construction of the seder takes us on a narrative journey from narrowness to expansiveness. If we take seriously the first door—and heart—opening of the night, if we allow the seder to be not performative but transformative, then by the time we open the door that second time, we will have changed.

What, then, are we to make of the revenge fantasy of shefokh hamatkha—pour out your wrath?

Haggadot today increasingly offer an alternative liturgy, a piece called shefokh ahavatkha—don’t pour out your rage, pour out your love.

Some argue this text offers a legitimate alternative, given that it, too, is quite old. It appears, they say, in a 16th century manuscript from Worms, Germany. But others argue that the poem is actually a forgery, that it was really written only one hundred years ago, by a rabbi who fled Galizia and then Vienna, ultimately escaping the Nazis by coming here, to the United States.

I find the attempt to address, liturgically, the need for another narrative, another end to this story, equally meaningful whether it emerged 500 years ago or 100, or even yesterday. This text reminds
us that we can, we must choose love.

This year, we must choose to open our doors in righteousness. When we say, let all who are hungry, come and eat, let’s mean it. If we do,then by the time we open our doors again, now with bellies full, we will not be able to pour out our wrath, but instead our hearts will be open to the power of love to heal us all.