Given the global growing divide in wealth concentration and given that this happens to be a year of shmita (release) when all debts are to be forgiven (according to biblical law), it makes sense to use the holidays of Passover and Easter to reconsider our relationship to money. Are we enslaved to a certain way of perceiving money? Could our relationship to it be ‘reborn’?

Last year, I blogged on how Passover’s Process takes us from brokenness to wholeness. What happens if we apply that process to our relationship with money? This is the purpose of the Seder I’ll be co-hosting and which will be attended by people of various cultural and spiritual backgrounds.

For those who want a glimpse of how we’ll be approaching our understanding of money through the rituals of the $eder, I’m sharing the Ten Plagues of Money, of how our perceptions of it can cause suffering.

The TEN Plagues of Money   (from Passover: Freedom from Money by ZinnHouse )

1. we focus on creating scarcity instead of abundance
2. we focus on accumulating money instead of circulating it
3. we focus on believing “more for you is less for me” instead of “more for you is more for me”
4. we ignore the hidden costs of our consumption instead of including them upfront
5. we focus on owning property instead of owning its improvements
6. we focus on loaning and borrowing instead of giving and receiving
7. we focus on monetizing everything (ideas, water, childcare, friendship) instead of sharing
8. we focus on what we want instead of what someone else needs
9. we focus on economic growth instead of sustainability and restoration
10. we focus on fear instead of love

I’m looking forward to some lively discussion about how we relate to money. I’m sure I’ll hear how it can make us crazy and how it can motivate us. But by the end, I hope we’ll see a way towards both responsibility and freedom with this thing, money, that affects us all in ways that we aren’t even aware. So when our religious festivals can be occasions for stepping back from and reflecting on our personal and collective lives, on the people and society we want to be, and the principles we wish to live by together, then they are well worth celebrating. And hopefully, the experience will be priceless.

See my Resources page for interfaith and interspiritual ideas with holidays and more.