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Resource Category: Passover

Passover is a time to focus on our collective story, but it can also be a time for us to explore our own. On Passover, we remember our freedom from the physical bondage of Egypt, but without acknowledging the mental bondage many of us are still trapped in we will never truly be free. That is why we built these resources, to help individuals utilize the themes and motifs of Passover traditions to examine their internal stories of slavery and experience an Exodus like no other.

“The Exodus from Egypt Occurs in Every Human Being, in Every Era, in Every Year, and in Every Day.” – Rabbi Nachman

Blue Dove Passover activities and resources are available on Haggadot.com to help you bring mental health into your personal Passover experience!   Haggadot.com offers easy-to-use templates and ready-to-print booklets that are perfect for your seder.

Passover: Four Cups Toward Freedom – Exploration of Liberation and How to Reclaim the Passover Seder for Ourselves with the T’Shuvah Center

Leaving Egypt is not just about our story and journey on the road to freedom. It is a foundational roadmap to liberation, both for a community and individuals and offers us a story of recovery. Each year, we retell it as a reminder to leave behind constrictions and slavery, and instead choose freedom and sovereignty. Jewish tradition commands us, as we are telling the story, to see ourselves as if we have left Egypt. Egypt is not just a country, an ancient place, or a space. It is not just the setting of the enslavement that we’ve endured. It is also an edict about how we leave Egypt internally.
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Looking for Chametz – Inside and Out

Chametz is also symbolic of other things like the yetzer harah (the ego, the self, mental clutter, negativity) that live within us and distract us from our true goals. We are tasked with cleansing ourselves of that kind of "chametz" as well, which allows us to focus on what matters in our lives. In a way, this is a mental cleanse as much as it is a physical cleanse. Try this fun mental cleanse resource to make space in your mind for freedom.
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Your Journey to Wellness – Told in Four Cups

Why do we drink four cups at the Seder? Traditional Jewish sources associate the four cups of wine with the four terms used by God in their promise to save the Jewish people from slavery, which has additionally been understood to be references to the different stages of redemption on our journey to freedom. In this resource, we ask ourselves if, as we drink the four cups during the Seder, we can think about and feel grateful for the steps that we have taken, are taking, or can take as we escape our personal Egypts.
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From Chaos to Seder: Pesach, Addiction, and Removing Our Personal Chains

We are going to know a new freedom” -Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 83. I have always marveled at the paradox that our nation’s liberation from the bondage of slavery is marked by the quintessential period of restriction. A holiday that requires us to adhere to strict guidelines and detailed instructions with such profound exactitude and measure. To distance ourselves from something that in the rest of the year we get to engage in unconditionally. This is freedom? In working firsthand with individuals in addiction treatment as they battle for ultimate freedom, I now understand that the answer to this question is a resounding yes.
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Dayenu: I am Enough

“Dayenu” means “it would have been enough,” and in the song we express gratitude for everything God did for us as we escaped Egypt. Gratitude is not something that comes naturally to everyone, and it is good for our mental well-being to call attention to the things in our lives that we are grateful for regularly.
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Magid: Telling Your Own Story

The religious and historical significance of retelling the story of Passover is apparent to anyone who participates, but little recognize the mental health benefits of reframing and shaping our narratives - especially narratives that are traumatic. This allows you to take ownership of your trauma, and doing so at the Seder should prompt us to consider how we can tell our own stories and take ownership over them.
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