The Shalom Center - Pesach

Passover of the Nations: Haggadot to Heal the World

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:44:03 -0400

The Exodus from Pharaoh's tyranny, the Passover Seder that recalls it, and the Haggadah ("Telling") that guides the Seder are at the heart of Judaism and Jewish peoplehood. So it is not surprising that efforts to renew Judaism have, beginning in 1969, created a number of new Passover Seder rituals that are deliberately focused on healing some aspect of the wounded world.

Some remain available for those who are seeking to shape their own Haggadot and want to draw on them. (This not only includes Jews with a creative outlook on their own tradition, but increasing numbers of people from other spiritual paths who find some wisdom and empowerment in the Seder.)

Dancing Freedom in the Passover Seder

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:44:41 -0400

Please feel free ("feeling free" is what Pesach is all about!) to forward this post as you please. If you like any of these suggestions, please also note our request for your support and use the coupon at the end of the post to help out. And we'd welcome you to our Website. Thanks!!

We are sending seven different moments or practices for you to considering adding to your Pesach celebration.

Blessings for a sweet and liberating Pesach for you and for the world --
Arthur
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A. The Freedom Plate

Several years ago, Martha Hausman proposed that a special plate be set aside next to the traditional Seder plate, on which could be placed physical objects brought by every participant in the Seder as a symbol of her/ his liberation THIS YEAR from Mitzraiim.

Passover, Earth Day, & the Global Climate Crisis: Seder Supplement

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:45:24 -0400

Dear Chevra,

It is the third day of the moonth of Nisan. We have just opened our eyes to the glimmer of the new moon, birthing the
moonth when -- in two weeks, at the full moon -- we not only remember and
reenact the ancient liberation from the top-down, unaccountable power of
Pharaoh, but take responsibility to free ourselves as well. All of us, all
earth and all humanity.

As the Passover Haggadah says, "In every generation, every human being must
go forth to freedom."

This year, Passover begins the night of April 19 and includes Earth Day on
April 22. And today, the greatest danger of destructive plagues comes from

From Passover into the Next Step: PHARAOH OR FREEDOM IN AMERICA?

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 18:33:19 -0400

by Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

Passover invites us to remember the past and reflect upon the present. After Passsover, how do we start walking our way into the future?

Four traditional questions are recited at the Passover Seder. But the real first question is this:

"Is Pharaoh our god, or is the Breath of Life?"

From Rabbi Jesus leading a march of palm-bearing Jews against the Roman Empire, where and when people had gathered to recall and celebrate the overthrow of an ancient despot ("Palm Sunday," in the Empire's provincial capital, Jerusalem, just before Passover time) ---

Forward to Fannie Lou Hamer of Mississippi chanting Black American freedom songs like "Go Down, Moses" --

Abrahamic Freedom Seder

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 05:34:37 -0400

New Jersey JewIsh STANDARD
Journeying together
By Elaine Kahn | Published 03/30/2006

A year ago, in Hope, N.J., Rabbi David Senter helped bring together Jews, Christians, and Muslims for a "freedom seder," honoring the historical Exodus tradition he says all three faiths treasure.

Senter then became rabbi of Cong. Beth Shalom in Pompton Lakes and planned to wait another year before introducing the innovative seder to his new congregation, he said in an interview. But during the recent controversy over the now-scuttled sale of American ports to a company in the United Arab Emirates, he heard things that disturbed him — "a fear, a paranoia" about where the purchasers were coming from, rather than "specific security concerns" — and decided not to wait.

Forty Years Later: MLK, Death & Resurrection

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:48:09 -0400

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

Death and Resurrection? Christian theology, of course, centers on that rhythm. Traditional Jewish prayerbooks also praise the God Who "gives life to the dead," but most modern Jews have either deleted or bowdlerized or ignored that passage. Forty years ago, I was the kind of activist secular Jew who not only ignored that passage, but ignored the prayerbook altogether.

Yet precisely forty years ago I experienced a profound – and profoundly unexpected –- death-and-rebirth of my own self, deeply intertwined with the American agonies of that spring, that year.

Passover: Street Seders for the Global Climate Crisis

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:49:22 -0400

Prepared by Rabbi Jeff Sultar
Director, Green Menorah Program of The Shalom Center

This year, Passover converges with Earth Day. And it does so at a time when the global climate crisis can no longer be ignored, calling for us to take bold action. Taking inspiration from "street theater," we propose holding "street seders" during Passover to oppose the pharaohs in our own day. A "pharaoh" is anyone (or anything) that enslaves us, that puts limitations on our lives from the outside or from the inside.

What personal, economic and political pharaohs need to be confronted this year, in order to pull our climate back from the brink of crisis? What does it mean to heed the call from Exodus to remember the most disenfranchised in our country and throughout the world, to act on behalf of those who are most immediately and deeply affected by climate change?

Passover: The Earth Rises Up Against Pharaoh

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:48:11 -0400

Passover -- Pesach -- commemorates and relives the moment of spring when new grain, new lambs, and new flowers rise up against winter, and the earth itself rises up against Pharaoh (in what we call the "plagues").

Can we bring this meaning of Passover to the American public, to heal the earth from the plague of global climate crisis?

For example -- Beyond the conventional home and community Sedarim, could we do Speakout Street Seders for the Earth at some key public places -- eating matzah and bitter herb, reciting the eco-disaster plagues of today, dancing to celebrate the coming of Elijah -- ourselves -- to free us from the Pharaohs that are ruining the earth?

THE SONG OF SONGS AS A SACRED RECIPE: LOVE, "CHAROSET" & THE LIBERATION OF THE WORLD

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 07:14:51 -0400

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

We are going to approach this subject –- sacred food –- the way you approach a sacred temple: first the outskirts, where you may know the structure already, from afar; then some unexpected beauties in an anteroom; finally, an inner Mystery revealed not to your eyes but to your lips and tongue.

The inner mystery is the dish called charoset. Keep seeking till you find her!

In Jewish tradition, eating food is a sacred act – and there are a series of concentric circles in which the intensity of the attention paid to food and the sacredness felt in food increases.

Seasons of Reinterpretation -- Transforming Passover. By J.J. Goldberg

Tue, 01 May 2007 15:27:13 -0400

JEWISH JOURNAL OF LOS ANGELES
APRIL 21, 2000 16 NISAN, 5760

Seasons of Reinterpretation

How a radical demonstration 32 years ago changed the culture of Passover

By J. J. Goldberg

The world has an odd habit, alert readers have noticed, of exploding in springtime, smack in the middle of the Season of our Liberation. Sometimes these explosions disrupt those carefully laid Passover plans in the most annoying way. At other times, Passover just gains new meaning.

It was this time last year, for instance, that Kosovo went up in flames. NATO had begun bombing the Serbian province in early April, to stop Serb outrages against ethnic Albanians. The bombings provoked worse outrages: mass expulsions, tearing at the West's conscience. Yet reactions from Washington were appallingly slow. At the time it seemed a case of blindness or worse. It turned out the problem was partly bad timing: Too many key Washington players had left town for Passover.

The Seven Who Danced in Paradise*

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:42:21 -0400

The Seven Who Danced in Paradise*

[by Phyllis Ocean Berman and Arthur Ocean Waskow, from their book TALES OF TIKKUN: NEW JEWISH STORIES TO HEAL THE WOUNDED WORLD.]

Imma Shalom was dancing like a storm of fire. Not for nothing did the people call her “Mother of Peace, Daughter of the Flame!” For all her solid middle age, she was no staid matron but a blazing energy.

She leaned even deeper into the dance, looking around for the others in her study band of six: gentle B’ruriah, who showed deep wisdom in her loving knowledge of the Torah; awkward Akiba, who was so deft with language; the dour Elisha ben Abuyah; and the two tall Shimons — ben Zoma and ben Azzai. B’ruriah had joked again and again that it took all four men to keep up with the Torah-learning of Imma Shalom and herself.

Do Not Stir up Love until It Please: the Song of Songs

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:27:30 -0400

[Some passages below are from Rabbi Arthur Waskow's book Godwrestling (Schocken, 1978) and were incorporated in Godwrestling -- Round 2 (Jewish Lights, 1995), along with other thoughts on the Song of Songs. This book can be ordered from The Shalom Center. Send a check for $12.95 per copy plus $3.50 postage per package to -- The Shalom Center, 6711 Lincoln Drive, Philadelphia PA 19119.]

According to tradition, during Passover every year there is a special reading of the Song of Songs—just as the Book of Esther is read for Purim and the Book of Ruth for Shavuot. So in the spring of 1973 the women and men of a Washington havurah, Fabrangen, gathered in the house of one member family to sit in a circle on the floor, munch fruit and matzah, and for the first time fulfill the mitzvah of reading the Song of Songs together. …

Muriel Rukeyser's poem "Akiba"

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 09:21:49 -0400

Lives *
By Muriel Rukeyser

AKIBA

The Way Out

The night is covered with signs. The body and face of man,
with signs, and his journeys. Where the rock is split
and speaks to the water; the flame speaks to the cloud:
the red splatter, abstraction, on the door
speaks to the angel and the constellations.
The grains of sand on the sea floor speak at last to the noon.
And the loud hammering of the land behind
speaks ringing up the bones of our thighs, the hoofs,
we hear the hoofs over the seethe of the sea.

All night down the centuries, have heard, music of passage.

Passover in the Streets of America -- in Spanish!

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:00:14 -0400

The immigrants' "Passover" in America

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

Through this spring, "Passover" has been happening in the streets of America.

It has been coming not from a written book, but from the hearts and minds and legs and prayers of a people. It is happening in Spanish and "Spanglish" more than in Hebrew.

Two million people went into the streets against a Congressional Pharaoh (the House of Representatives) that was saying "Let us make it a criminal act, a felony to be punished with prison at 'hard labor,' to live in the United States without a document. Let us make it a felony to feed or heal or educate or comfort these criminals.

Passover 2006: Every generation, Pharaoh; Every generation, Freedom

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:09:42 -0400

Dear Friends,

Passover is on its way. The First Seder falls on Wednesday night, April 12. Below we comment on several aspects of the holy season, and how it is significant today in our own generation -- for Jews, and also for other religious and secular communities.

But first, a few specific suggestions:

A. One New Question:

Why do we break the matzah in two?

Because the bread of affliction becomes the bread of freedom only when we share it. So long as a few grasp the overwhelming share of earth's abundance, flooding earth and air and water with the wastes from that indigestible luxury, our prosperity remains the bread of affliction, stirring rage and fear. Only when all can eat well and gently from the earth, will our bread become the bread of freedom.