This year, Open Temple’s “Seder Quest,” our 10th annual Exodus through Venice, California, speaks to this moment through a “Seder Hahipuch” — a backwards Exodus. As war has made the reality inside of Israel one that many are seeking out of, we are asking the “fifth question” of: How do we have a Seder about longing to arrive in Israel when those in Israel live in the exile of war? Every year, our Seder asks us to take a vertiginous journey through rabbinic disagreement, as the Haggadah is a literary form of cubism, preserving and contrasting all perspectives at once. Our “Synesthesia Seder” invites everyone to smell what is touched, hear what is seen and step beyond the pages and into the possibility of Ki Ilu – “as if” each of us were coming out of Egypt to return home – to Venice, to Los Angeles, to the U.S., to Self. As images from not only Iran, but the Middle East and beyond dominate our news stories, Open Temple’s call this year is to weave local community to one another as we strengthen and fortify our own community resilience to what lies ahead.
This Passover, let yourself be a wild thing and eat kitniyot (foods permitted by Sephardic tradition but generally avoided by Ashkenazi Jews on Passover) and tahdig (Persian rice) — it will transform seder for you!
“Open Temple’s call this year is to weave local community to one another as we strengthen and fortify our own community resilience to what lies ahead.”– Rabbi Lori Shapiro
By Rabbi Lori Shapiro for Jewish Journal, March 2026