40 Years After the First Freedom Seder, Contemporary Seders Abound

The Haggadah cover for the Freedom Seder for the Earth

LOS ANGELES

On April 5, 1968, Arthur Waskow was walking to his house in Washington among rioters and armed guards. It was a neighborhood under curfew, the night after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.

Waskow, who had been involved in the civil-rights movement, spent the week ferrying food, medical supplies and doctors from the white neighborhoods to the black ones. The next week was Passover.

"I was walking home past the army, and my kishkes began to say, 'This is Pharaoh's Army,' " recalled Waskow, now a rabbi who lives in Philadelphia.

Back then, he was hardly a practicing Jew, and that night, for the first time, he really thought about what freedom meant at the Passover seder.

"I found myself profoundly moved that this discussion of liberation didn't only apply 3,000 years ago to ancient Israelis, but to other generations as well," he said.

Frightened and inspired, Waskow went on to write a new version of the Haggadah using passages from King, Henry David Thoreau, Alan Ginsberg, slave owners and literature from the Warsaw ghetto, combining it with the traditional Haggadah -- his own tattered Bar Mitzvah copy.

The next year, on April 4, 1969 -- the anniversary of King's assassination -- he used it at his first "Freedom Seder," where some 800 people -- blacks and whites, Jews and non-Jews -- gathered to celebrate freedom on Passover.

"That night changed my life," stated Waskow.

The Rise of Modern-Day Causes

It changed the lives of many others as well, albeit indirectly, because it opened up the seder to modern-day causes.

While it has become common at seders today to tie Passover's freedom from slavery theme to contemporary issues -- feminism, homosexuality, war, the economy, the environment -- the original Freedom Seder in Washington and its Haggadah spawned generations of nontraditional seders in which the Egyptians serve only as a metaphor for what enslaves the Jews.

"Every Haggadah before that one had told the story of the liberation of the ancient Israelites from slavery under Pharaoh -- period," says Waskow.

By weaving the Jewish story with the struggles for freedom of black America and other cultures, races and religions, "it has sparked for many people the creation of many seders and Haggadot devoted to various aspects of liberation," he said.

On March 29, 40 years later -- 40 being significant as the Jewish number symbolizing rebirth -- Waskow's Shalom Center, an activist organization in Philadelphia, is sponsoring a Freedom Seder for the Earth in Washington at the Shiloh Baptist Church.

Although Waskow will be in Washington, his Shalom Center is also co-sponsoring a similar event in Philadelphia, along with local Christian and science-related organizations (call 215-836-5978 or e-mail: joybergey@earthlink.net).

Like the original Freedom Seder, the new ones in Philadelphia and Washington will be interfaith, multiracial and multicultural. But instead of slavery, it will highlight what Waskow calls "climate catastrophe."

Like the 10 plagues that destroyed Egypt and its ecology, the environment now suffers many dangers, such as global warming or "scorching," drought and hunger, according to Waskow.

Other groups across the country will hold Freedom Seders for the Earth and use the new Haggadah, Freedom Seder for the Earth: Facing the Plagues and the Pharaohs of Our Generation (www. shalomctr.org).

For example, karpas, the tradition of dipping a vegetable in salt water to signify the salty tears of slavery, begins in the Freedom Seder with this prayer: "If we cannot take joy in the return of spring, how can we be happy in utopia? The Song of Songs brings us the springtime when flowers rise up against winter, the juices of love arise from the depths of depression, and the night-time of history gives way to the sunlight of Eden, the garden of delight."

Yachatz, the ritual of breaking the matzah, begins with this prayer: "Why do we break this bread in two? Because if we hold on to the whole loaf for ourselves, it remains the bread of oppression. If we break it in order to share it, it becomes the bread of freedom. In the world today, there are still some who are so pressed-down that they have not even this bread of oppression to eat. There are so many who are hungry that they cannot all come and eat with us tonight."

Hunger is another issue being raised at seders today.

There are many modern-day causes that groups are promoting for Passover this year, such as the Jewish World Watch's awareness-raising about Darfur, the Jews United for Justice Labor Seder for D.C.'s day-laborers and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society's "Progress by Pesach," a national Jewish campaign promoting humanitarian immigration reform. But many see the need for urgent attention to hunger, especially in the current economic climate.

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the national public affairs arm of the organized Jewish community, is co-sponsoring the Child Nutrition Seder with Mazon, a national nonprofit Jewish agency that fights hunger (engage.jewishpublicaffairs. org/t/1686/content.jsp?content_KEY=853).

The seders, being held at 20 locations across the United States, are timed to raise awareness of the child nutrition reauthorization bill in the U.S. Congress. The legislation, now moving through the House of Representatives and the Senate, funds the federal government anti-hunger programs.

In Philadelphia, the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia is co-sponsoring a seder on March 26 with the Jewish Labor Committee focusing partly on such issues.

Calling the legislation "one of the most important anti-hunger bills," Adam Kessler, director of the JCRC, said: "This is our opportunity to begin education in our community about this important issue."

Organizers of the Child Nutrition Seder, which comes complete with its own Haggadah, hope that participants will lobby their representatives, who will vote on the bill after the congressional recess ends on April 20.