Years ago I was lucky enough to interview the Lubavitcher Rebbe, a wise and extremely complicated man who had a large devoted congregation in Brooklyn. He said many things, but what I remember most from that interview is his notion that life consists of 72 stories. It’s always all in the telling.

Some Haggadah writers
thousands and thousands
sometimes famous novelists
write their version
usually a story we know
Red Seas, Bad Egyptians
Good Jews, and then,
Big Hollywood Sequence,
Exodus, matse, plagues redemption,
and in the end Jerusalem.
Some people add Harriet Tubman,
Dr. King, Nelson Mandela.
replacing he and she with
they and we. We all tell stories
we want to hear. Me too.

In my version Jews and Egyptians
Palestinians and Israelis
Shiites and Moslems
we sit in a room together
we have to be eating
knowing nothing is simple
nothing is ever easy
absolutely nothing