Shalom, everyone.
 
As I was giving a very lengthy pre-Pesach workshop to a very devoted group, many of whom you will meet in Israel this summer, we discussed the fact that of all of our stories and history, the Pesach story is, by far, one of the most well-know, in part because of the seder.  It occurred to me that we wouldn't be playing catch up so much with teaching Jews our own story if, in a simple way, we could tell the story a little further than the seder in Bnei Brak.  Anyway, below you will find my attempt to do that.
 
The Matzah of Judea by Jonina Pritzker

(To be inserted after reading about the seder of the sages in Bnei Brak)
                                 
As we read about this ancient seder that took place in Bnei Brak, we think of our rabbinic sages observing Pesach in the land of Judea, what is now called the modern State of Israel.
 
We put the Matzah of Judea on our seder tables, as we think of the continuous presence of our Jewish people in Judea, in Israel, from ancient times until today.
 
Like Pharoah, the ancient Romans were great oppressors of the Jews. They destroyed the ancient Temple in Jerusalem; they murdered over one million Jews, including our beloved Rabbi Akiva, of whom we read in our hagaddah; they made the practice of Jewish life a crime punishable by death; they expelled the vast majority of Jews from our land, changed the name of Jerusalem to a Roman name, and similarly changed the name of Schechem, where Joseph is buried; they erected a pagan temple on the ruins of where our holy Temple once stood, and they changed the name of our eternal homeland of Judea to Palestine, nearly two thousand years after the first Jews began to live in Judea, now called, Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. These enemies of our people did all of this in an attempt to rob us of our homeland, our history, and our heritage.
 
We think about our ancient homeland of Judea with love and with conviction.  Our Jewish people worshipped for over 400 years at the Temple that King Solomon built in Jerusalem; and they lived, at that time, as a free and sovereign nation in the Land of Israel for 700 years, from the time Joshua re-entered the land with the Israelites, until the Babylonians destroyed the Temple in 586 BCE.  Seventy years later, our ancestors lovingly rebuilt the holy Temple, which then stood for centuries until the Romans destroyed that Temple in the year 70 CE.
 
Many conquerors tried to consume Judea within their own empires: the Babylonian empire, Persian and Greco-Assyrian , Roman, Byzantine, Arab Caliphates, Turkish, Crusader, Ayyubid, Mameluke, and Ottoman.
 
But in all of these attempts, the land of Israel, this ancient land of Judea which bears our name, remained the country of only one people, and Jerusalem has served as the capital of only one nation –  that of our Jewish nation.
 
Through every banishment and forced exile, our Jewish people continually looked to our ancient homeland, prayed for our return to our own land, included the mention of Israel and Jerusalem in our prayers every day, imbued each life-cycle gathering and festival celebration with the yearning for our return to the land of our ancestors, the land of Judea which is the modern State of Israel.
 
For centuries, Jews living in exile joined their prayers together with the prayers of She'arit Yisrael, the remnant of our people, who always and continuously lived in the land of Israel, from ancient times, until today, to express our enduring yearning for our ancient homeland.  Nearly two thousand years after these ancient Romans destroyed our holy Temple and tried to destroy our people, our Jewish way of life, and our connection to the land of Israel, we are still here, and our prayers and yearnings were answered in the founding of the modern State of Israel.
 
Ours is an ancient history in Judea, in our land of Israel.   As we behold this Matzah of Judea, we devote ourselves to continue to work today to ensure that the history of our people is remembered. The war that numerous empires waged against us continues, even in our day.  The tactics employed by the ancient Romans are being used again, as historical places are renamed, as artifacts are removed, as enemies conspire once again to rob us of our history, our heritage, our homeland.
 
At one time, we added the Matzah of Unity to our seder table as we prayed for the freedom of Jews from the former Soviet Union.  Today, many of these refusniks are living in the land of Israel.  At one time, we added the Matzah of Hope to our seder table as we prayed for the freedom and survival of Ethiopian Jews.  Many of these Jews of Beta Israel are now living in the land of Israel. Today, we add the Matzah of Judea, and we look with hopeful eyes towards the day when our Jewish people can live in freedom in our own homeland.
 
We stand firm against our adversaries; they will not defeat us, just as the Pharoah did not defeat us in days of old.  As a united people, we uphold our heritage, we treasure our history, and we affirm the ancient and eternal connection of the Jewish people to our historic, ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.