My house is already filling with Passover. Okay, the cabinets are still stuffed with bread products and nothing is shiny clean; but the sounds of the Season of our Freedom dance throughout the rooms.
It began earlier this week when our four-year-old, Lia, belted out “Dayenu” flawlessly. I was impressed. My seven-year-old, Ma’ayan, joined in and followed it with the Four Questions and “Avadim Hayinu,” complete with a dance showing how once we were slaves but now we are free.
So I, loath to skip a chance to talk about the big stuff, asked my daughters about freedom — what they think it means to be free.
Lia ignored the question and continued her singing (perhaps a demonstration of her own liberation from having to listen to me); but Ma’ayan said that to be free was to not be a slave, unlike the Jews in Egypt and the blacks in America’s recent shameful history. And then she twirled away to join her sister.
Passover is said to be the most celebrated Jewish holiday among American Jews and I’m confident I know why. It’s not just about family and food or seders that offer opportunities for intellectual exploration or just a terrific chance to heckle.
We love Passover because it’s so accessible. Indeed this year we at The Chronicle attended three mock seders — Our Community Women’s Seder, the African American/Jewish Task Force seder and a seder put on by the Badger Association of the Blind and Vision Impaired.
There were others that either didn’t happen or we didn’t get to attend, most notably a Catholic-Jewish seder, which surely would have been lively considering the recent release of the film “The Passion of The Christ.”
Passover has become our opportunity to build bridges, forge connections and share our history and aspirations. It’s our chance to sit together and remember how we were slaves, celebrate our liberation and note how we are still not free.
Jew and non-Jew alike can relate to the themes of Passover. Still, each of us has a different perspective on freedom and bondage in our own lives.
Array of views
The Haggadah itself presents contrasting pictures of freedom. The song of “Avadim Hayinu,” as my daughter demonstrated, includes the phrase, “Avadim hayinu, ata b’nei horin” (“Once we were slaves, but now we are free”).
On the other hand, the words of “Ha Lachma Anya” tell us that we are still not free: “Hashata avdai. L’shana haba’a b’nei horin” (“Now we are enslaved. Next year we will be free”).
This issue of The Chronicle celebrates our diversity by highlighting an array of different views on freedom. As Howard Kaufman said at the seder at the Badger Association (story, page 1), “…there are always modern slaveries to be freed from.” The remarkable fact of a seder specifically geared for the visually impaired represents a kind of liberation, a step out of darkness into the light of full participation.
The annual African American/Jewish Task Force seder, a joint project of the Milwaukee Urban League and the American Jewish Committee-Milwaukee Chapter, seeks to find common ground by exploring the universal themes of the Exodus story.
The custom Haggadah, written and compiled by Shahanna McKinney-Baldon and Peter Goldberg, defines Mitzrayim in a broader sense than the literal Egypt.
“But the name Mitzrayim has in it the Hebrew word for narrow, constrained or inhibited. It is thus the narrow place that squeezes the life out of the human soul and body. For some of us, it was Pharoah’s Egypt. For some of us, it was the Middle Passage. For some of us, it was the Spanish Inquisition or Nazi Germany…. No one place is always Mitzrayim, but any place — even our own — can be turned into one.”
In recent conversations, an Israeli friend living in Milwaukee defined freedom as peace, the freedom to live without terror. Another friend talked about the freedom to do what she wants, to be untethered by convention or expectation, even the delightful liberation of a little time away from husband and children.
In Amy Waldman’s story, many of the Jews who choose to live in the city talked about diversity and community, the freedom to see (and live) outside the box.
David Cobb, in his touching story of his daughter’s adoption from China, wrote about the freedom of opportunity and possibility that his daughter acquired by leaving her small village and joining his American family.
There’s also another kind of liberation that Americans note on overseas trips — happiness in one’s station in life, the freedom to live without the constant burden of wanting more.
This perspective highlights the bondage of our own perspectives about our jobs, our families and ourselves. And it brings to light the notion that maybe our endless choices are not the keys to our freedom. Our mentality is.
The days when I did mindless, repetitive work, I tried to keep this in mind: Real freedom is the ability to appreciate each moment and take personal responsibility for my presence in it.
As we sit at our seders this year, we will talk about freedom and perhaps we will take to heart the statement, “In every generation, let each person look on himself as if he or she came forth out of Egypt.”
But whatever our bondage and whatever our route to freedom, I wish for all of us the wisdom to celebrate our liberation, to recognize our current bondage and to work tirelessly for freedom. Hag Pesach sameach.
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