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FEATURE:
Freedom Seder
April 22, 2005 Episode no. 834
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BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: For Jews, Passover begins this weekend (April 23.) The eight-day festival starts with a seder -- a dinner. The elements of the seder represent the story of the Jews' Exodus from Egypt. They include salt water for the tears and suffering of the Israelites; unleavened bread for the dough that didn't have time to rise; bitter herbs for the hardship of slavery; and parsley, a sign of springtime -- the season of Passover.
In recent years, as Passover has approached, some Jews and African Americans have come together for what they call a Freedom Seder to commemorate their common liberation from slavery. They tell their respective stories and eat food from each tradition. We attended the Freedom Seder this year at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
CLARA KELLER (Seder Organizer and Student, University of Massachusetts Amherst): Shalom and welcome to our seder. We come together tonight to celebrate liberation from the chains of oppression. Let us recall the struggles of all people in every generation, in every part of the world.
LARRY GOLDBAUM (Director of Office of Jewish Affairs, University of Massachusetts at Amherst): The Freedom Seder is a celebration of two cultures, each of which has in its history some experience of oppression, and specifically of slavery, and it's a celebration of our coming together in a positive way to share that experience.
MAMEI WILLIE-BONGLO (Seder Organizer and Student, University of Massachusetts Amherst): By way of literature, cultural and traditional ceremony, and delicious food, we hope this night will leave a lasting impression, one that invokes the spirit of compassion, sincerity and an appreciation for the diversity in all of us.
Ms. KELLER: The book we read from tonight is called the Haggadah, which, in Hebrew, means "the telling."
(reading Hebrew prayer): Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha-Olam...
Traditionally during Passover, we tell strictly the story of Exodus, but we've rewritten that story to include pieces of writing and art by people from different cultures, including the African-American diaspora, so it's expanding our notion of that biblical story.
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Unidentified Man (reading): And God said to Moses, "I've seen the awful suffering of my people down in Egypt." The Lord God himself has said, "Let my people go."
Mr. GOLDBAUM: When they were slaves, African-Americans in this country who were exposed to Christianity would read these stories from what they would call the Old Testament, from the Book of Exodus, and they drew inspiration from that, because here were stories about a people -- the Israelites -- who had been enslaved, and so a whole tradition of African-American spirituals, music and storytelling derived from that. And so when those students come to this, there's all of a sudden a recognition that oh, I didn't realize that that's where this came from, that this is the same story, that we share this story.
Unidentified Man (reading): As we celebrate here, we join with people everywhere. This year, we celebrate here. Next year, we celebrate all over the world.
Ms. WILLIE-BONGLO: We come together, we have traditional ritual, there's a seder plate on each table, and participants go through each component of that plate.
Unidentified Woman (reading): Why do we eat maror on Passover? Maror, in Hebrew, means "bitter." The maror helps us to put ourselves into the place of those who suffer, those who are poor and hungry, those who are sick and alone.
Ms. WILLIE-BONGLO: You know, it's all about a process of healing and understanding that we're different yet similar in many ways.
Unidentified Man (reading): If these things are so, who among us can say that he or she is free?
Ms. KELLER: It feels really good to me just to be sharing this tradition with other people, because I think Judaism has a lot of mystery around it. A lot of people don't understand what it means, what our religion is about, what the culture is about.
It just feels good to sit together and eat together, and thinking about these topics that aren't necessarily easy to talk about in other contexts.
Ms. WILLIE-BONGLO: Discourse and dishes definitely go together.
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Related R & E Material:
 Passover Meal, April 2, 2004
Women's Seder, April 11, 2003
Passover Haggadah, March 22, 2002
Passover, April 6, 2001
Passover Preparations, March 26, 1999
Women's Passover, April 17, 1998
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