This coming week, we will share an extended conversation with Rabbi Mishael Zion, whom I asked to reflect on the “discussion” between Alana Newhouse and Rabbi Irwin Kula in his response to her now viral piece, “Zionism for Everyone.”

As part of our discussion, Mishael spoke about Pesach and the Seder a few times, and one five-minute insight about what this year’s Seder should be about struck me as worthy of sharing before Shabbat, so people will have more time to think about his suggestions and how families might incorporate his insights into their Seder, if they wish.

The full conversation with Rabbi Zion on the fascinating conversation between Newhouse and Kula will follow at the beginning of the week.

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Rabbi Mishael Zion, an educator and community entrepreneur, is a faculty member of the Mandel Leadership Institute. He was the founding director of the Mandel Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture, where he currently serves as a faculty member dedicated to the leadership development of fellows and graduates in the fields of culture, media, and community in Israel.

Mishael is the author of The Israeli Haggadah (2024) and Esther: A New Israeli Commentary (2019) and is the co-author of A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices (2007) and Halaila Hazeh: An Israeli Haggadah (2004), together with his father, Noam Zion.

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Mishael is a founder of the Klausner Minyan, a partnership minyan in Talpiot, where he lives with his wife and four daughters. Mishael holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and Jewish thought from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and rabbinic ordination from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in New York. Previously, he served as the co-director and rabbi of the Bronfman Fellowship, a leadership program for outstanding young Jewish people in Israel and North America.

Mishael has served as a faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and North America, and has been a visiting scholar at the New York University School of Law and the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

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