UNITED STATES
The Garden of Roses: Stories of Abuse and Healing
Virginia Jones
Last week I planned to attend a Passover Seder celebrated in a church, but I found myself too anxious to enter the building. I never even parked my car. After driving 45 minutes from my home to the church, I just turned around and drove home.
The Passover Seder is a dinner cum religious ceremony in Judaism that celebrates why and how the Jewish people fled slavery in Egypt for freedom in the land of Canaan. Traditionally, the youngest child present shares the basic story of the Passover, but in Reform Judaism the celebration has become an opportunity to contemplate injustice in modern times as well.
For example, during a Passover Seder, one might contemplate why so many people are still enslaved in the modern world and why do so many people remain hungry.
It is also a common practice to invite to your Passover Seder the stranger and the person in need, in part, as symbols of the injustice the Jewish people had to endure in Egypt. In other words, the Egyptians treated the Jews as strangers when they enslaved them. The idea of inviting a stranger to your Passover Seder is to not behave like Pharaoh, to be hospitable and compassionate.
I long knew about the story behind the Passover Seder and the focus on social justice. I wish I had known about the part of inviting a stranger to your table.
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