It’s 11 p.m., Thursday night before Passover, and Rabbi Menachem Friedman of Chabad in Har Adar,  a half hour from central Jerusalem, is still inviting complete strangers to the Seder.

He’s calling back everyone who phoned *3770, Chabad in Israel’s cellphone hotline for Passover information worldwide, and inquired about Seders in his neighborhood.

“I just wanted to make sure you had a place,” he said. Chabad representatives Israel-wide, like Rabbi Friedman, are working to bring total strangers, last minute deciders, and other Fifth Sons to the Seder. 

There are four famous son prototypes mentioned in the Haggadah text: the Wise, Wicked, Simple, and the one who Does Not Know How to Ask. All of them have different ways of relating to the Exodus from Egypt, but they all show up to the Seder. The Lubavitcher Rebbe taught that there’s one more, the Fifth son whose seat remains empty.

There are all sorts of Fifth Sons, who do not celebrate Passover, not just because they are disconnected from Judaism, but also because they are incapacitated by mental illness and developmental disabilities, or too financially stretched to purchase the holiday’s pricier items. Chabad in Israel is working to bring a meaningful Passover to them all.     

 Rabbi Meir Mor Yosef of Pardesia, a town near the coastal city of Netanya, is leaving additional room for unscheduled guests because of their proximity to the Lev HaSharon Mental Health Center. When families wish to visit patients over the holidays, the Mor Yosefs act as hosts and often as a safe place for families to take a breather from the stress of having a relative hospitalized for mental illness.  Rabbi Mor Yosef  visits patients at Lev HaSharon regularly, especially during holidays like Passover. The message of the Exodus, in which the Jewish people overcome the boundaries and mindset of slavery to realize their full potential resonates with the patients working to overcome their own limitations.

Autism also throws barriers up between those in its clutches and the world around them. Rabbi Menachem and Chaya Levitin, Chabad representatives in Givat Ada, a city in northern Israel near the famed Roman ruins of Caesarea, modify their programs to make them accessible to young people on the autism spectrum attending Harim, a special school.  Every weekday morning, Rabbi Levitin helps several students put on Tefillin. In the week before Passover, Chabad ran a matza bakery for the school’s 35 students. Rabbi Levitin “relates to the students very well. He knows them, and they know him. He gives them a lot of love,” said Harim program coordinator Maimon Azran. 

Financial hardship is another cause of the Fifth Son phenomena.  Passover is an expensive holiday, even in Israel where one would think demand for Passover products and ample supply of them would lower the cost of chicken, at least. No such luck. Chabad of Ohr Yehuda offers a public Seder for 10 shekels a head, an amount that covers the cost of a chicken leg. As modest as the price is, Ohr Yehuda residents have trouble scraping together the funds, and Chabad of Ohr Yehuda’s administrator Levana Stevi is busy until minutes before the Seder finding sponsors to subsidize the already subsidized fee. 

Families in Netivot worry about covering Passover food costs and about their Gaza Strip neighbors, about 3 miles (5 km) away. “We need a lot more protection than we have now from rocket attacks, but that does not stop our programs,” said Rabbi Binyamin Fudurovsky, a Chabad of Netivot representative.  To help Netivot’s neediest make Passover in their own home, senior Chabad of Netivot representative Rabbi Yashar Edry distributed over 50 food packages with oil, eggs, matzahs, wine, and vegetables, and will be welcoming another  40 people to the community Seder. 

Throughout Israel, Chabad is removing the barriers to Passover so that all Fifth Sons that are hungry, physically and spiritually, may come and find meaning in the holiday.