beautiful community that could be created if these Chad Gadya characters managed to get along .
Religious poems don ’ t exist to provide us with specific policy guidelines , to tell us exactly how to protect ourselves from the predators who seek to do us harm . Rather , poems plant values within us : If you are too fixated on revenge , you end up creating a topsy-turvy world in which God ends up on the wrong side .
Somehow , we ’ ll have to learn to turn the page from Chad Gadya-style violence , even though the Haggadah ’ s next page is blank . We ’ ll have to write it together .
Rabbi Robert Scheinberg is rabbi at United Synagogue of Hoboken . He is also Interim Rabbi-in-Residence at the Academy for Jewish Religion .
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