Philly Rabbi Greens the Passover Seder
If you’ve hung around Greenies at all – or heck, if you’ve picked up a newspaper in the last few years – you’ve heard of “retrofitting”…mostly with regard to environmental engineering. That’s when you go back to an already-built-up site, like a city, and make it green. Add in renewable energy, install a light rail system, put trees on roofs. You get the idea.
But have you ever thought of retrofitting an ancient religious tradition? And, more specifically, the Jewish Passover seder?
Much like the Freedom Seder he fathered during the Civil Rights era, Philadelphia’s Shalom Center director, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, has once again re-visioned the centuries-old Passover ceremony. This time, he’s made it green.
Traditionally, the Passover Seder includes imbibing wine, eating matza and re-telling the story of the Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt.
In his modern-day interpretation, Waskow focuses on the ten plagues God visited upon Egypt in order to convince Pharaoh to free the slaves.
He views the plagues as prototypes of eco-destruction.
There are two passages that particularly interest Waskow. One begins, “In every generation there is one who rises against us to destroy us.” The other begins, “In every generation all human beings must see themselves as those who arise to go forth from slavery to freedom.”
“It’s clear in our generation,” says Waskow, “that real liberation has to include liberation of the earth from the disasters that human technology is pouring on it, in a way very like Pharaoh and having results very like the plague.”
In thinking about how to translate his thoughts into effective action and mobilizing of people, Waskow came up with the “Street Speakout Seder.”
The idea is for people to go to public places like an Exxon Mobile office, or “to a place of liberation like a wind farm,” and to hold an abridged version of the seder. The result is a public demonstration in the context of Passover.
Spring 2009 marks the 40
th anniversary of the Freedom Seder, which Waskow created. It was the first Passover Seder that connected the liberation struggle of ancient Jews with the modern day freedom struggle of black America.
“This was the seed of the idea,” says Waskow. “That the seder could be used to address the issues of every generation.”
Waskow plans to make a big push for the eco-minded Street Speakout Seder in Spring of 2009.
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