But this Friday night, as they sit down for Passover feast, thousands of Australian Jewish families will also turn their minds to Melbourne sex slaves, gay and lesbian people struggling for acceptance and Aboriginal land rights.

It's all part of what social-justice Jewish group Stand Up hopes will become a modern Australian take on Passover.

During the feast of Passover night – which this year falls on Good Friday – it's customary to read the Haggadah, an archaic text about slavery, poverty, freedom and redemption.

But for many Jewish people, the Haggadah is worlds away from their everyday reality. The translations from Hebrew available in Australia are generally either American and Americanised, or from Israel. Stand Up development director Lillian Kline said the translations were often arcane, distant and uninspiring.

Enter The New Australian Haggadah.

Stand Up crowd-funded a small print run for a modern Australian version of the book, expecting to raise $15,000 – enough to print a modest 700 copies in time for Passover. Instead, they raised $40,000 in a couple of weeks, and sold out their first print run of 3000 books.

With bookstores closed on Good Friday, the team has spent the past couple of days driving frantically across Melbourne, hand-delivering their book to bookshops and individual customers.

This modern take uses gender-neutral language where possible. Scattered throughout are musings and commentaries by academics, rabbis, writers and community leaders on issues familiar to modern Australian readers like Aboriginal land rights, the "slavery" of poverty, the sexual servitude of indentured prostitutes, gay rights and asylum seekers.

Take this passage by Jewish writer Ronch Willner: "The challenge is to celebrate difference when it is not easy – when it arrives on boats, rejects colonial ownership, challenges ideas of family, sexuality and the boundaries of Jewishness".

Or this, by Rabbi Steven Greenberg, on gay rights: "Thousands of years of precedent should not be taken lightly, but neither should the living presence of hundreds of thousands of people whose sexuality does not fit traditional boxes".

While issues of sexuality and identity preoccupy modern Australians, editorial team member Lillian Kline said even Orthodox Jewish bookstores had welcomed the book.

"It's what Passover is all about, which is talking about freedom and justice, and these issues are still pertinent today and as a community we really need to stand up and make some noise about injustice wherever we see it."