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Several years
after I first heard my mother sing, ‘When Israel was in Egypt’s land’, I
prepared a dissertation during my studies at the London School of Economics, on
the theme of ‘The role of religion in American slave resistance.’
While the slave owners taught their African property Christianity
in the cynical hope that ‘the sons of Ham’ would accept their lowly place in
the world, the slaves learnt the subversive messages of the Bible:
that God is a liberator who frees the oppressed from their shackles:
‘Go down, Moses, way down to Egypt land, tell old Pharaoh, to let My
people go.’ The Exodus is our story and it is also a tale that continues to inspire persecuted peoples everywhere. During the 1960s Civil Rights Movement activists in the USA, both Jewish and black, would hold ‘Freedom seders’ together. In the 1980s Jewish feminists created new Haggadot, which told the tale of the role played by women in the Jewish struggle against persecution, from Miriam to Hannah Senesh. In the 1990s, a group known as ‘Jews Against Apartheid’ started by two Indian Jews, Rachel and Shalom Charikar, used to organise an annual seder outside South Africa House on the fourth night of Pesach. For centuries
Jews celebrated Pesach as oppressed people – no longer slaves in Egypt, but a
persecuted minority in many lands. Nowadays, persecution is a memory for most of
us – and so perhaps the time has come for us, not only to remember that ‘our
ancestors were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt,’ but also to remember those who
remain in chains today: people living under tyrannical regimes; child
slaves and persecuted minorities throughout the globe.
As we tell the tale of our people’s liberation around our seder
tables, let us also include the stories of other peoples who are not yet
free. In the spirit of Jewish
hospitality, let us invite a ‘stranger’ to join our festivity and so make
the call of Ha Lachma Anya a reality:
‘Let all who are hungry come and eat; let all who are in need come and
share our Passover.’ |
