Passover begins this Wednesday! How might we LGBTQ families use the traditional “Four Questions” of the holiday to guide our modern-day journeys? Here are my suggestions, slightly revised from a piece I wrote a few years ago.
Passover, the Jewish holiday celebrating freedom from slavery, starts this weekend—and yes, there are a few (very few) queer-inclusive picture books about the holiday. There are none that I know of about Easter, alas (but I’ll share an idea for one)!
You may know Lesléa Newman best as the author of Heather Has Two Mommies—but she’s also an award-winning author of Jewish children’s books, including a recent one that’s just right for the holiday of Passover, which starts this week!
Passover begins tonight, and although I’m somewhat casual in my observance, I love that the holiday, which commemorates the Jewish people’s journey out of slavery in Egypt, has become a time for reflection on freedom and social justice. This year, I’ve been thinking about how we LGBTQ parents might use the traditional “Four Questions” of Passover to guide our modern-day journeys.
I’ve been celebrating the spring holidays with my interfaith family and reflecting that Passover and Easter this year come in the shadow of ongoing and spiteful religious exemption laws in a growing number of states and in the federal government. These laws, widely seen as targeting the LGBTQ community, would allow people to cite their religious beliefs as a reason to discriminate against others. I have to remind myself, however, that we shouldn’t set religion and LGBTQ equality as necessarily opposing forces.
Tonight is the first night of Passover, when Jews around the world gather to celebrate freedom from slavery in Egypt, under the leadership of a man who had two mommies.
Tonight is the first night of Passover, when Jews around the world gather to celebrate freedom from slavery in Egypt, under the leadership of a man who had two mommies.
You likely know about Heather Has Two Mommies, the classic children’s book featuring a girl with lesbian moms. But did you know author Lesléa Newman is also the author of two Passover-themed picture books?
Lesléa Newman is best known as the author of the first children’s book to feature LGBT parents, Heather Has Two Mommies, as well as other LGBT-inclusive picture books, such as Mommy, Mama, and Me; Daddy, Papa, and Me; and Donovan’s Big Day. The prolific author’s latest book, A Sweet Passover, does not feature an LGBT family, but is nonetheless a charming tale worthy of consideration by readers here.
Here’s a seasonal tale that even those not of Jewish heritage will appreciate: Rabbi Andrew Sacks, director of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly in Israel, has shared an e-mail from Jewish scholar Susannah Heschel, in which she explained the relatively recent tradition of placing an orange on the Seder plate. She began the tradition “as a
