SPECIAL COMMINTART

The Demonstration
That Changed Passover

The D.C. police responded with mas-
New York
sive force, determined to ensure the
he world has an odd habit
bankers' meetings started and ended
of exploding in spring-
on schedule.
time, smack in the middle
Besides those who had countries to
of the Season of our Lib-
run, many of the global economy's key
eration. Sometimes, these explosions
leaders — World Bank President
disrupt those carefully laid Passover
James Wolfenson, IMF Deputy Direc-
plans in the most annoying way. At
tor Stanley Fischer, U.S.
other times, Passover just
Treasury Secretary Larry
gains new meaning.
Summers, Federal Reserve
It was this time last year,
Chairman Alan Greenspan
for instance, that Kosovo
and
others — had to get
went up in flames. NATO
home for the seder.
had begun
un bombinc,
bombing the Ser-
The teargas and D.C.
bian province in early April to
police barricades evoked
stop Serb outrages against
memories of another Wash-
ethnic Albanians. The bomb-
ington Passover, 32 years ago.
ings provoked worse outrages:
That was a Passover that
mass expulsions, tearing at
J.J. GOLDBERG changed Arthur Waskow's
the West's conscience.
Special to
life. Waskow, in turn,
Yet reactions from Wash-
the Jewish News
changed the way American
ington were appallingly slow.
Jews celebrate Passover.
At the time, it seemed a case
The nation's capital was under mili-
of blindness or worse. It turned out
tary rule during Passover 1968. Mar-
the problem was partly bad timing:
tin Luther King Jr. had been assassi-
too many key Washington players had
nated April 4 in Memphis. Riots
left town for Passover.
This year, the action was right there erupted in black neighborhoods
in Washington, where the Internation- nationwide. In Washington, federal
troops were called out to impose
al Monetary Fund and World Bank
order.
were meeting under near-military
Waskow was a 34-year-old
siege conditions. Thousands of left-
researcher at the left-wing Institute for
wing activists had gathered to protest
Policy Studies, estranged from
the inequities of the global economy.
Judaism, deeply involved in the anti-
war movement and sympathetic to
J.J. Goldberg is a national columnist
black militants. In the polarized
and author of "Jewish Power" His e-
America of 1968, he was on the side
mail address is jjgOcompuserve.com
that saw American troops as agents of

T

movement's guidelines regarding
homosexuality, each rabbi was clearly
welcoming to Jewish individuals
regardless of their sexual orientation.
How reassuring that is for people who
want to practice their faith but
thought there was no place for them
in a synagogue!
The ECHO (Educating our Com-
munity about Homosexuality through
Outreach) Project of MJAC com-
mends the Jewish News for its contin-
ued cooperation with all our endeav-
ors. Your ongoing support has been
instrumental in getting the message
out to gays, lesbians and their friends
and families.

Linda Lee

ECHO Project chair, MJAC
Southfield

Passover's Ties
To Environment

Passover has always been a meaningful
time for me ("Tales Of A Seder," April
14). It was a time of celebration, family
gatherings, and a time when we could
reflect on somber issues and really see
how lucky we were as a family. My fami-
ly always made the service relevant as we
often discussed current events. We
prayed for the end of Vietnam, inequali-
ty, apartheid and other demonstrations
of oppression, servitude and social slav-
ery.
Now as an adult, I am struck with
the metaphor of what is happening
with the environment around us and
the story of Passover, the story of Exo-
dus. The metaphor struck me when we
were discussing how God had hardened

repression, not guardians of public
safety.
Passover came 10 days after King's
death. Waskow was downtown, help-
ing bring food and medical supplies
to areas under curfew. "That
evening," he recalls, "I was walking
home to my family's seder, past
detachments of the army patrolling
the streets. My guts started saying,
`This is Pharaoh's army, and I'm going
home to do my seder.' I thought of all
the black spirituals about Pharaoh's
army and Israel in Egypt land, and it
all kind of erupted in me."
At the seder that evening, "when
we reached the part about how each of
us must look upon himself as if he
himself had come out of Egypt, we
stopped the seder and just talked. It
was a life-turning moment for me."
He spent much of the next year
compiling his own Passover Hagga-
da, "The Freedom Haggadah." It
included poetry by Allen Ginsberg,
passages about Vietnam and civil
rights, portions of the secular Israeli
kibbutz Haggada.
The central narrative, Waskow says,
was a retelling of the Exodus in which
Moses was a labor organizer among
the Hebrew bricklayers. It had been
written in 1943 by pacifist teacher A.J.
Muste, and "he kept moving back and
forth between Hitler and Pharaoh,"
Waskow says.
Waskow's Haggada was unveiled in
April 1969, on the third night of
Passover, at an event he dubbed "the

Freedom Seder." Held in a black
church in downtown Washington, it
was broadcast live on a left-wing New
York radio station, then rebroadcast
on Canadian television days later.
The seder caused an underground
sensation. Thousands of Jewish radi-
cals had split from the New Left after
the Six-Day War and were searching
for an identity. Waskow's Haggada
became a rallying point. The next
year, freedom seders took place across
the country. "It showed people for the
first time how you could open up the
Haggada," he says.
It also sparked furious debates.
Many activists didn't consider
Waskow's text pro-Israel enough. They
countered with the Zionist "Jewish
Liberation Haggadah," then the more
religious "Fourth World Haggadah."
The year after, a Brooklyn women's
collective produced the first feminist
Haggada. After that, Waskow says,
"there was just an explosion of differ-
ent haggadahs."
Though Waskow didn't know it,
he was continuing a Jewish leftist
tradition going back generations.
Yiddish-speaking socialists had been
holding public "third seders" since
the 1930s, substituting politics and
poetry for the Haggada's religious
texts. A similar tradition grew up
among Israel's kibbutzim —
Waskow's direct inspiration, through
a sister in the Negev.

Pharaoh's heart and he could not act
with, perhaps, what his consciousness
would direct. Corporations are often
blamed for environmental destruction,
but what are corporations except for
individuals bound by rules and articles
of incorporation? The current econom-
ic assumptions and structure of corpo-
rations do not allow for the environ-
mental stewardship we seek. The rules
of business engagement today parallel
Pharaoh's hardened heart. Profit does
not need to come at the expense of our
natural world.
We have become slaves to our world
as well. There are a plethora of books,
publications and Web sites dedicated to
simple living, eliminating our dependen-
cy on over-consumption. How many
plagues will it take for us to be free?
The most obvious correlation to
the story of Passover is the effects of

global warming and the loss of our
natural resources. We have our mod-
ern-day plagues: the droughts, floods,
blood in our water (pollution of
chemicals and imbalances due to over-
fertilization), pestilence (new viruses
and bacteria), declining species, and
toxins in our food. What will it take
to soften Pharaoh's heart?
Pollution and climate change affect
children the most; 5 million American
children have asthma. April 22nd is
the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. Let
us pray for a better world for these
children, and let us work together for
a better world for these children.

PASSOVER

on page 39

Catherine Greener

co-chair,
Southeastern Michigan Coalition
on the Environment and Jewish Life
Ann Arbor

'AN

4/21

2000

37