• It may have been unintentionally buried in the previous email, but TBA will be hosting a virtual Seder on the Second night of Pesah! This was both an easy decision and a hard one. Easy, because how could the community not find a way to come together during this time, when the impact of the isolation becomes unbearable, particularly on Pesah when gathering with friends and family is so normative, needed, necessary?! But hard, because it involved some negotiations with my/our religious principles and standards. I am someone who generally does not use technology on Shabbat and Yontef. And to the extent that the shul does it, it is done passively, or via manipulation by someone who is not Jewish, and who was given the task before candle-lighting. After much soul-searching, I decided that the circumstances are extreme this year. There is a line quoted by many rabbis when considering temporary and at least somewhat radical exemptions or leniencies within Jewish law, in response to rare circumstances. It comes from Psalms/Tehilim (119:126). It reads עֵת, לַעֲשׂוֹת לַיהוָה, הֵפֵרוּ, תּוֹרָתֶךָ -- Et la’asot ladonai, hepheru toratekha. “It is time to do for God. Void/they voided your Torah.” One could teach an hour-long class on this concept, but it is understood midrashically to mean that some circumstances are such that to do God’s will is to break some previously unbreakable part of Torah. You can see how easily one could apply this all too conveniently, permitting all sorts of previously forbidden things, because “the circumstances demand it.” But in this moment, at this time, in my rabbinic estimation, the circumstances at least permit it. Meaning, while I am not, of course, obligating any of you to handle technology on Shabbat or Yontef should you choose not to, I am granting my rabbinic blessing to our hosting this, to my own (as limited as possible) direct interaction with the technology, and to your logging on to join us. Some details:
• We will start this at 6:30 PM next Wednesday night, on the eve of the Second night of Pesah. I will host it from my home/Seder Table.
• Here is the ZOOM LINK: https://zoom.us/j/936841609
• We may try to front load some of the more fun and kid-friendly parts of the seder, so that our youngest TBAers can enjoy the experience as much as possible. 
• While this cannot be truly interactive because of the audio limits of Zoom…I am looking for participation from many of you! Click this link to an editable Google Sheet.  On it, you will see many parts of the seder listed on the left. In the next column I list what I am looking for in that section (someone to read, sing, offer an interpretation, some family ritual, etc..). And on the right is a column where you can put your family name!
• First-come, first-served. Pls don’t abuse the editing permission to add your name to a slot someone has already claimed.
• Some sections, as noted, will have more than one presenter, and there should be space there in the document to note that.
• I am not looking for every one of these slots to be filled. This is just the maximal list of parts of the Seder that I think would be interesting if someone else led/read/sang aside from me. So do not feel pressure to fill in empty slots. Just choose one that you think would be fun for your family to lead/sing/explain.
• I will have the final document with me, and then just ask the next family “up” to unmute themselves for their part.
• I will ask that all those not “contributing” at any given moment to be muted, in order to make the audio more tolerable.

• Pesah Leniencies for this year. Some folks asked what is making this year different than all other years. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist). As some thought that the link to leniencies I sent out did not seem that different than in years past. So, some updates:
• First, here again is the most recent and updated link from the Rabbinical Assembly with movement-wide guidelines. If you scroll down you will read through some hierarchies as you are making decisions about where to be lenient and where to be strict.
• Here are some specific leniencies I am permitting for my own family and recommend you adapting for your own for this year only if procuring foods with more direct Pesah supervision is either a financial concern or puts you too frequently in the mode of shopping in crowded places, which unnecessarily exposes you to risk:
• Dairy products:
• Unflavored, simply-produced cheeses, bought before Pesah, can be permitted this year without a Kosher for Passover symbol. Meaning, for those who during the year would purchase cheese without a heksher, you can purchase simple blocks of unflavored cheese from any vendor. Extending that leniency to shredded or sliced cheese is also something worth considering, but it exposes the food product to one more layer of machinery that could possibly have hametz. For this year, I think one can permit it.
• Same with yogurts, cream cheese, cottage cheese, sour cream: unflavored, as minimally processed as possibly, they can be purchased before Pesah and consumed on Pesah, even without a KfP symbol.
• Nut butters:
• Purchase freshly ground almond or cashew butter, ground and purchased before Pesah (such as at Whole Foods) and they can be eaten on Pesah
• If one is comfortable eating kitniyot/legumes (and, perhaps, even if you are not, as peanuts are not really kitniyot), the same can be done for freshly ground peanut butter. 
• Matza does seem to be generally available. But, again, a reminder that one is not obligated to eat Matza beyond at the seder itself. And, we are still planning for Aaron Asher to send out some videos describing how soft Sephardi-style matza can be baked at home, under the right set of circumstances.

• Some of you will not join the second seder on Zoom, and/or may be finding themselves in a position to lead a Seder on your own for the first time. JTSA (The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where I studied to be a rabbi) is offering this webinar for those who want tips on how to lead an amazing seder. 
• Click here for some wonderful material from Haggadah.com, essentially an easily downloadable and printable Haggadah coloring book for kids. They ask for a donation for each download, so please support them if you do!
• We will be holding morning services every day of Yontef via our livestream. Each service will be led by one of our clergy, and perhaps some members of his/her family. As we will do starting for this Shabbat morning’s service, we will indeed consider this experience to be a minyan for the purposes of saying Mourner’s Kaddish. That has been our standard for the Daily Minyan zoom services. We did not include Mourner’s Kaddish last weekend on the livestream. But we got feedback from many people indicating we should reconsider, and I have. First, many said they actually were davening along to the livestream. Not just observing/witnessing. But as if they were in services. So even though we, the leaders, could not see you or know you were there…you were there! And we also heard from some who are in mourning how empty and unsatisfying it was to pray the whole service with us, but with no opportunity to say the Kaddish. So we will change as of this Shabbat morning, and it will continue though Pesah. The schedule will be:
• Thursday morning April 9 at 10:00am, Pesah 1 (Including prayer for Tal/Dew)
• Friday morning April 10 at 10:00am, Pesah 2
• Shabbat morning April 11 at 10:00am, First day of Hol Hamoed (Shir Hashirim/Song of Songs is included)
• Wednesday morning April 15 at 10:00am, Pesah 7
• Thursday morning April 16 at 10:00am, Pesah 8, (Including Yizkor)
• We are still discussing which nights of yontef we will have livestreamed services from the sanctuary. The likely schedule:
• Erev Pesah April 8, First Night—no services. We may do a Daily Minyan Minha service that night, via Zoom, before people begin their seder
• Second Night of Pesah, April 9—no services
• Friday night April 10 at 6:45pm, end of Pesah 2—Minha/Kabbalat Shabbat/Ma’ariv on the livestream
• Saturday afternoon/evening April 11 at 7:15pm Minha/Ma’ariv/Havdalah