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An Activist's Hagode: Seder for a Better World
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The Passover Seder is an activist’s dream of cultural ritual—a debate with dinner and drinking:
an evening for celebrating liberation through cross-generational questioning, story-telling,
challenging, and eating—bitter, sweet, salty—accompanied by music and wine. Why is this night
different? Because it has it all going on—cognitive thrills, historical chills, taste temptations,
libations—and all with high moral purpose.
The Workmen’s Circle cultural seder or “third seder” was among the first alternative Jewish rituals.
Long before anyone dreamed of a feminist seder, a peace seder, sustainable food or ecumenical
seder, the Workmen’s Circle celebrated Passover advocating its cultural/political causes in a
communal gathering of progressive Jews. In 1933, thirty Workmen’s Circle students and their
families gathered in Crown Heights celebrating Passover in Yiddish poetry, song and social justice
debate. And it’s been going on ever since.
This new Activist’s Hagodeh (pronounced ha-gaw-deh) is the resonant ritual guide to the seder
meal and to the values and issues that stand behind it. The meal is more than gefilte fish and
matseh balls, eye watering horseradish and crackling matseh—though food is a crucial anchor,
drawing together sense memories, family history and communal traditions. Seder (prounounced
say-der) means order in Hebrew/Yiddish. The evening’s historical reflections on slavery and
freedom, on historical memory and its present day imperatives, are not a free–for-all (though
some seders turn out that way). The order of the evening is presented in the hagodeh (hagaddah
in modern Hebrew). We move through a series of cups of wine that we drink for joy and spill in
compassion, a sampling of mouthfuls that taste like tears, look like slave-made brick mortar.
We prepare our children to ask questions (four at minimum), we evaluate their ability to interact
with the burdens of history (four kinds of children) and we adults are urged to tell the story of the
passage from slavery to freedom over and over—to make the experience as vivid “as if you yourself
had been liberated from slavery in Egypt.” We are urged to use the seder as an imaginative
opportunity, so that when and if our time comes, we will have the wherewithal to act.
We hope that Seder for a Better World/An Activist’s Hagodeh
will guide your Passover celebrations for many years to come and act as a manual
to inspire us all to use each day in the service of improving the world we live in.
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