For millions of us Jews around the world, this may be the most stressful Passover of our lives, since we are praying for the freedom & dignity of our fellow human beings Israel is oppressing.

Steve Villano

Apr 01, 2026

Each Passover, over the past dozen years or so, I’ve written an original Haggadah for my granddaughters, emphasizing freedom, equality and humanity above all.

Each year during their lifetimes, as the Extreme Right Wing Fanatical government of Benjamin Netanyahu has jettisoned the beauty and universality of Judaism in favor of a narrow-minded nationalism that demonizes and destroys non-Jews, the challenge to tell the story has become more acute.

The first Haggadah I wrote was when our oldest granddaughter, now nearly 17, was almost 4 years old, and her younger sister was 2. Their youngest sister would be born in 2015.

I decided to write my own Haggadahs for my granddaughters since I found all pre-published Passover stories for children to be harsh, foreboding and sadly lacking in even the barest attempt to capture the attention and imagination of young children, without talking down to them. I scoured Jewish bookstores, on-line offerings, and even Jewish museums. Bupkus. Everywhere I turned: Bupkus.

I tried adjusting the standard Passover story with a few flourishes, but it just didn’t work. I wanted my granddaughters to feel the same passion for the story of freedom against all odds that I felt, as a convert to Judaism, and to absorb such lessons of humanity and Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) into their lives.

I agreed with the social commentary of Jon Stewart at the time, himself a Jew, that we Jews were utter failures when it came to “marketing” our own holidays for our children and grandchildren. We had to be more creative to compete with a plethora of presents under a glittering Christmas tree, or oodles of colored eggs to emphasize Easter—a masterful sales pitch for Christians to sell death, rebirth and resurrection.

Everyone of our holidays, it seemed—Passover, Purim, Hanukkah—revolved around fighting for survival and killing others to gain our freedom from oppression, from Pharaohs, or Hamens or other demented dictators, who hated us simply because we were not like them. The story of Jewish history, was not only one of resilience in the face of such constant threats, but the constant challenge and struggle to continue to exist.

The challenge, and struggle, I did not see coming, was how to tell the story to my granddaughters now, when we Jews had become the oppressors of others, and the anti-democratic totalitarians advancing nationalism, militarism, authoritarianism, or ever worse, ethnic and religious Genocide. What if we became our own worst nightmares?

Each year, I paid close attention to what was of greatest interest to my granddaughters, and wrote and enacted a personalized Passover story true to Jewish history, yet tailored to their young interests to make it even more riveting for them: Faery princesses, or Shopkins, or She-roes (from a TV show), or Cats, or, Puppy Pals. More recently, with the active and delightful participation of our youngest granddaughter—who declared our Passover “puppet-shows” to be her favorite holiday—we’ve added such new favorite themes like “Axolotls” in 2024, and “Rainbows” in 2025.

Those newer themes were a relief for me— coming in the two years after the October 7, 2023, mass murder of 1200 Jews by Hamas, and Israel’s extremely disproportionate counter-attack upon Gaza, which has grown into the Genocide of tens of thousands of non-combatant Palestinians—including some 20,000 infants and children.

In addition to being of great interest to our youngest granddaughter, now 10, those themes carried the blessed benefit of being able to focus on the remarkable “regenerative” powers of the Axolotl to overcome certain death, and on the resilience, diversity and humanity, represented by Rainbows, and not on the monstrous morphing of the Israeli government and armed forces into becoming, themselves, the awful oppressors we have battled throughout our history. We had become our own Amalek, the essence of all evil. How would I explain that twist in the Passover story to a 10-year old who loves the holiday—and whose loved for it I helped nurture—and whom I adore?

What makes the struggle even more wrenching this year—5786 in the Judaic Calendar, or some 5709 years before the creation of the State of Israel—is that the governments of both Israel and the United States have gone stark-raving mad. They’ve abandoned democracy and any semblance of respect for international law or any law; justify the slaughter of innocent non-combatants, in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon as “pre-emptive self-defense;” violate state sovereignty by reducing to rubble every part of any country they want to conquer; and commit campaigns of political assassination and abduction of world leaders they consider to be in their way.

Such paranoia can be used to justify the slaughter of anyone perceived to be different—precisely the kind of paranoia present in every Passover story, and used, throughout history against us Jews and of civilization. Only now, the Pharoahs are Jewish and American, and the targets of their state-sponsored violence and aggression are everyone else who is not, or who does not bend to their will. The symbolic Red Sea has become the Mediterranean, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Litani River in Lebanon.

Our 17-year old granddaughter is fully aware of this enormous gash in the universe, which has tipped our earth out of orbit, creating a new axis of evil, and a new level of inhumanity toward others. Her questions are acute, and reflected by the Jewish Voice for Peace:

“Why is this Passover different from other Passovers?: Genocide. The unique scale, and devastating brutality is still being measured; the dead are still being counted, while the death toll continuously climbs. At this very moment. Israel is dropping bombs on Iran, on Tehran, on Lebanon, on Beirut; while Palestinians in Gaza try to retrace their spiraling Exodus back to what? As we, Jews of conscience, try to go retrace our spiralling back to ritual, back to Passover, back to what?

We ignore those questions of this new generation of Jews, of exquisitely sensitive human beings, at our own peril. War is peace; lies are truth; the inhumane is humane. Everything has been turned on its head, and they know it.

In the Introduction to an alternative Haggadah entitled “ Next Year in Safety & Liberation: Fighting Fascism & Genocide in the Jewish Tradition,” Liv Kunins-Berkowitz writes:

“As we gather for Passover, modern day Pharoahs are rising to power all over the world. In the United States, a fascist government is using the guise of fighting antisemitism to punish those who speak out for Palestinian freedom. This Passover gathering is an act of refusal. We will not allow our tradition, history, and identity, to be fuel for authoritarian crackdown”

Throughout all of this, our 10-year old granddaughter and I are undaunted, driven by our joy in creation, our love for others, and our endless reserves of hope and optimism, that things can be better.

Two years ago, when we wrote of Axolotls—the indefatigable amphibian found in a small lake in Mexico City—we wrote that:

“Little did the Mean King know,

That Axolotls can grow and grow.

Cut off a leg, they’ll grow it back!

Poke out their eyes, they’ll pop right back!

Even if the whole sky turns to black, you foolish Pharoah,

Axolotls NEVER lose hope—

They have that knack!

And so, we rallied again, inspired by the little creature that could.

Last year, in my despair over the utter destruction of Gaza and the mass murder and starvation of Palestinian children, our “Rainbow Passover,” lifted us out of darkness:

“The Rainbow People were free at last;

Their days as slaves, now long past.

Their differences, valued;

Their diversity, a blessing;

Each with a dignity that left no one guessing.

They had made it to the Promised Land,

With each giving the other a helping hand.”

No matter the destruction and devastation, we would continue our efforts, no matter how small, to repair the world. As Jews, we have an obligation to do so; as humans, there is no alternative.

So this year, this Passover, gives us another chance to imagine an alternative universe— beyond the bombed out schools and deaths of 175 children at their desks in Iran, or the intentional destruction of a civilian apartment building in Lebanon, crushing all inside; beyond the death by malnutrition and starvation of another 18,000 babies and children in Gaza, intentionally denied bread, water and medicine by the fanatical Pharoahs of our time.

This year we’ll include olives on our Seder Plate, to symbolize the rows and rows of Olive trees, sustainer of life, destroyed by fanatical Far Right West Bank settlers, on the small parcels of land farmed by Palestinian families for decades. To uproot such a farm, is to uproot a family’s history and it’s future.

For weeks, we’ve crafted a new story of Passover, this year influenced by the eternal optimism of Pokemon—and of my granddaughter, a glowing light in a dark valley.

This year, our Passover Haggadah is a work in progress and is as old as a humanitarian Judaism, Islam and Christianity—where all children are cherished and equal; and all, not just some, are “chosen” to be loved, protected, nourished, fed, and housed, raised far from bombs, and cradled in our arms of peace.