Fair Trade your Seder
Every Passover we gather as family and community, to celebrate our people’s freedom. We are obligated to tell the story of the Exodus, our journey from slavery to liberation. We eat maror to remind us of the bitter taste of that experience.
“In every generation a person is obligated to see him or herself as though he/she had personally been redeemed from Eqypt“, we read in the Haggadah. In recalling our people’s experience in Egypt, we are urged to remember that we were once slaves. We tell the details of the story, act it out, and eat charoset, symbolizing the mortar with which our ancestors made bricks for the Egyptians – we attempt to “experience” what slavery felt like.
Though we may not be actual slaves ourselves today, our history moves us to ask “Where does slavery exist today?”, “Who is enslaved?” “What is that slavery like?”
Thousands of children in West Africa, often trafficked and without choice, work hard to bring us our favorite chocolate treats. They spend long hours, working in hazardous conditions, not going to school, and losing their childhoods.
This Passover, may we tell their story and help free those children laboring in the cocoa fields!
Resources for your Passover Seder
- Include this Haggadah supplement, developed by Fair Trade Judaica, in your Seder to draw attention to the issue of children laboring in the cocoa fields; it also includes writing a letter during Passover to send to Hershey
- Place our “Virtual” Fair Trade Kosher for Passover chocolate bar, a photo of cocoa beans, or a Fair Trade chocolate bar on your Passover Seder plate and talk about child labor as a modern day form of slavery
- Sing one of these new Fair Trade Chocolate songs (written for our Seder Lyrics Writing Contest)
- Learn more about child labor in the cocoa fields to share at your Seder
- Find more Jewish oriented resources on the Rabbis for Human Rights website
- Review the “From Chains to Change” Haggadah written by Moral Voices (an Initiative of Penn Hillel) for other inspirational readings
- Use Fair Trade made products at your Seder table (e.g. matzah holders, candlesticks, handwashing cups and more)
Inspire Others and Share your Fair Trade Seder Story
- Send us your story (and optional photo) and we will add it to our site.
