Nirtzah

The Fourth Cup - the Cup of Acceptance
(The fourth cup of wine is poured.)

As our Seder draws to an end, we once again take up our cups of wine. The Redemption is not yet complete. The fourth cup recalls us to our covenant with the Eternal One, to the tasks that still await us as a people called to holy service, to a great purpose for which the people of Israel live: the preservation and affirmation of hope.

(All drink the fourth cup of wine.)

Peace!
Peace for us! For everyone!
For all people, this, our hope:
Next year may Jerusalem be at peace!
Next year may all be free!

Go back to Egypt and the Greeks,
Where the Wizard understood
The spectre haunted where man seeks
And spke to ghosts that stood in blood.

Go back, go back to the old legend;
The sound remembers, and is true:
What has been most and least imagined,
No other, there is nothing new.

The giant Phantom is ascending
Toward its coronation, crowned
With music unheard, but unending:
Follow the flower to the ground.

-Allen Ginsburg, 1949