In Freedom Seder, Jews And African-Americans Built A Tradition Together
APRIL 04, 2015 5:16 AM ET
Friday night marked the start of Passover, when Jews around the world tell the story of Exodus. That story, with its radical message of freedom, has resonated with African-Americans since the days of slavery.
"Both the Jewish community and the black community have suffered great atrocities. And so the fact that we were coming together was a very important and powerful idea."
- Topper Carew, civil rights leader
More than 40 years ago, these two communities wove their stories together for a new Passover ritual — the Freedom Seder.
The story dates back to April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. A week later, as the U.S. military occupied Washington, D.C., the sun set on the first night of Passover. For Arthur Waskow, who was working in the peace and civil rights movements back then, the day brought a revelation.
"I walked home, to get ready for the Seder, and that meant walking past the army, with a machine gun pointed at the block I lived on," he says. "And my kishkes, my guts, began to say, this is Pharoah's army!"
Waskow, who is now a rabbi, came up with a new Haggadah, a guide to the Passover service, that spoke to this moment.
"I wove the story of the liberation of ancient Hebrews from Pharaoh with the liberation struggles of black America, of the Vietnamese people, passages from Dr. King, from Gandhi," he says.
In 1969, on the anniversary of King's death, 800 people gathered in the basement of Lincoln Temple, a black church in Washington, D.C. There, Jews and Christians, rabbis and ministers, black and white, used Waskow's Haggadah to hold a Freedom Seder.
"In the church basement that night, the spirit was high," says Topper Carew, who was one of the readers leading the service.
more & you can listen to the story.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2015/04/04/397323302/in-freedom-seder-jews-and-african-americans-built-a-tradition-together
DO SOMETHING!
| 
