During this year’s Passover Seder, we started by going around our festive table and asking each person to recount how his or her family came to the United States.

Here is a partial list of those places: the former Soviet Union, Ukraine, Italy, Cape Verde, Germany, Sicily, Hungary. We were, in essence, a table of immigrants who acknowledged how amazing it was to be observing this holiday in freedom, given what our families had gone through to get here.

I wish Congress would do likewise — start each of their sessions going around the House and Senate chambers, recounting where their families came from and, in so doing, acknowledging our strength as a nation of immigrants.

Perhaps this would give them pause to approach their work differently and work in OUR collective best interest.

Allen M. Spivack

Jamaica Plain