In addition to Elijah’s Cup, add a wine cup or goblet next to your Seder Plate on your table. Towards the beginning of the Seder after doing the Kiddush over the first cup of wine, the leader could hold up this special cup and say:
This Spring marks the 65th anniversary of Israel: 1948 to 2013.
On this historic occasion, we add a cup of wine to the Seder to celebrate Israel’s birthday.
With this Cup for Israel, we honor the achievements of Israel.
We give thanks that Israel has rescued so many Jews from danger.
We recognize the energy and creativity of Israel.
We hope that peace can soon come to Israel.
With this Cup for Israel, we send greetings from Jews around the world to the Jews who day by day build the State of Israel.
L’chaim – To life!
The leader can take a sip of wine from the special cup and continue on with the Seder.
***
In addition to or instead of the Cup for Israel, you might insert any one of the following three readings at some point in your Seder.

ISRAEL by Jorge Luis Borges

A man imprisoned and cast into a spell
A man condemned to be the snake
Who keeps watch over infamous gold,
A man condemned to be Shylock
A man bent over the earth in hard work
Knowing that once he stood in Eden,
An old man with his eyes put out who will bring down
the pillars of the house,
A face condemned to wear a mask,
A man who in spite of man is Spinoza and the Baal Shem and the Kabbalists,
A man who is the Book
A tongue that praises from the depths
The justice of the skies
A salesman or dentist who spoke with God on the mountain top
A man condemned to be the object of ridicule
The abomination, the Jew,
A man stoned, set afire,
Asphyxiated in death chambers,
A man who endures and is deathless,
Who now has returned to his battle
To the violent light of victory,
Handsome as a lion in the 12 o’clock sun.

WE PRAY FOR ISRAEL

We pray for Israel,
Both the mystic ideal of our ancestors’ dreams,
And the living miracle, here and now,
Built of heart, muscle, and steel.

May she endure and guard her soul,
Surviving the relentless, age-old hatreds,
The cynical concealment of diplomatic deceit,
And the rumblings that warn of war,

May Israel continue to be the temple that
magnetizes the loving eyes of Jews in all corners of the world:

The Jew in a land of affluence and relative peace
Who forgets the glory and pain of his being,
And the Jew in a land of oppression whose bloodied fist
Beats in anguish and pride
Against the cage of his enslavement.

May Israel yet embrace her homeless, her own.
And bind the ingathered into one people.

May those who yearn for a society built on human concern
Find the vision of the prophets realized in her.
May the readiness to defend
Never diminish her search for peace.

May we always dare to hope
That in our day the antagonisms will end,
that all the displaced, Arab and Jew, will be rooted again,
That within Israel and across her borders
All God’s children will touch hands in peace.

A SIMPLE PRAYER –

What shall I ask You for, God?
I have everything
There’s nothing I lack.
I ask only for one thing
And not for myself alone;
It’s for many mothers, and children, and fathers
Not just in this land, but in many lands hostile to each other.
I’d like to ask for Peace.
Yes, it’s Peace I want,
And You, You won’t deny the single wish of a child.
You created the Land of Peace,
Where stands the City of Peace,
Where stood the Temple of Peace,
But where still there is no Peace…
What shall I ask you for God? I have everything.
Peace is what I ask for,
Only Peace.

Shlomit Grossberg, age 13 Jerusalem