"Nation of Immigrants" Seder

The Boston area is great for Jewish cultural events. If you really wanted to, you could do at least 2-3 events per week without even being a member of a temple. This past Sunday we attended the 4th annual Anti-Defamation League of New England's "A Nation of Immigrants" community seder, which was open to the public. The theme was based on an essay by John F. Kennedy in which he emphasized the positive impact immigrants have had on this country and argued for liberalizing immigration laws to end the bias towards Northern Europeans. It was an inspiring event, with about 300 people of various religions and ethnic backgrounds in attendance.

The seder was designed to maintain the basic structure of a traditional seder yet promote the relevance of its themes to all other ethnic and religious groups who meet adversity. In this sense it was a very pleasant contrast to the words found in a traditional hagadah (seder book), which tend towards the outdated and chauvinistic. The traditional hagadah talks about the Jews being freed from slavery in Egypt, and thanks god for striking down our enemies and making us fruitful in multiplying. I have found this type of writing hard to swallow because 1) Jewish slavery occurred thousands of years ago, 2) any persecution the Jewish People suffered in Egypt very likely paled in comparison to the holocaust, 3) Jews outside of Israel have had a very low birthrate and our numbers are rapidly shrinking as a percentage of the U.S., European, and world population, and 4) We live in a pluralistic society, and ethnocentrism just doesn't sit well with me and a large portion of the U.S. population, particularly non-Orthodox Jews, and 5) Who really believes that the Red Sea parted?

While telling the story of the Jews escape from Egyptian slavery, the Nation of Immgrants hagadah broadened much of the language to include the redemption of a much broader range of oppressed peoples. There was multi-cultural entertainment interspersed with addresses by people of various backgrounds. The most inspiring was a woman from Honduras who was raised in a tough town in Masachusetts and found herself pregnant as a teenager and on the road to fitting the stereotype of someone from her ethnicity and class. However, she found the strength to take advantage of the opportunities that this country offers and she will be taking the bar exam shortly to fulfil her dream of becoming a lawyer who represents the disadvantaged.

Lenny Zakim was the leader of the Anti-Defamation League of New England for many years and he did tremendous work in bringing together Jews and people of other religions and ethnic groups to work on inter-group harmony and shared goals. Unfortunately he died prematurely of cancer and the beautiful Zakim bridge was named after him. The New England ADL has also been independent in its stances from the national organization, especially in regard to promoting recognition of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks during WWI. An organization like the New England ADL makes me proud to be Jewish.