About this book
In 1969, Arthur Waskow created the Freedom Seder to address America’s racial issues a year after the assassination of Martin Luther King. It began a revolution in American Judaism, using the ancient Passover Seder ritual to tell a contemporary story of liberation and combining the ancient and the timely in a way that lay the path for subsequent repurposing of the Seder for other messages.
Liberating Your Passover Seder tells the story of those innovations while laying the groundwork for future religious creativity.
Liberating Your Passover Seder tells the history of the Freedom Seder and includes material marking the Freedom Seder’s 40th anniversary celebration in 2019.
Liberating Your Passover Seder retells the origin of subsequent new haggadahs, including those focusing on Jewish-Palestinian reconciliation, environmental concerns, feminist and LGBT struggles, and the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020.
Liberating Your Passover Seder includes Susannah Heschel’s explanation of why she famously added an orange to the Seder plate.
But more than looking back, Liberating Your Passover Seder is a challenge for all of us to heed Arthur Waskow’s renewed call to “Free your seder!”
Contents
In Every Generation: Looking Forward
Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow and Rabbi Phyllis Ocean Berman
Why I Wrote the Freedom Seder and
Why It’s Still Necessary 50 Years After Dr. King’s Assassination
Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Father Dan Berrigan, Cornell University, and the Freedom Seder
Rabbi Arthur Waskow
The Influence of the Freedom Seder, 44 Years Later
Rabbi David Saperstein
The Shalom Seders: Three Progressive Visions
Reena Bernards
A Museum of History Creates the Future:
The Contemporary Resonance of Ancient Ritual
Emily August
The Seder Sisters
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
The Wellspring: A Public Women’s Seder
Rabbi Tamar Cohen
Women: Enslaved or Liberated by the Seder?
Rabbi Shalom Schachter
Mah Nishtanah? Pesach Liberation and LGBTQ Coming Out
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum
The Song of Songs Seder: A Night of Sacred Sexuality
Rabbi Robert dos Santos Teixeira, LCSW
Celebrating Queer Sexuality: Song of Songs Aslant
Susala Kay
The Seder of the Children of Abraham
Rabbi Brian Walt, Rabbi Mordechai Liebling and Catherine Essoyan
A Freedom Seder in Hebron
A. Daniel Roth
Campus Freedom Seders: Freedom For Who, Exactly?
Jess Schwalb
Earthy Teachings of Pesach
Rabbi Arthur Waskow & Rabbi Jeff Sultar
My People Were Refugees: The Writing of the HIAS Haggadah
Rabbi Rachel Grant Meyer
Discovering the Ecological Imperative of Passover
The Backstory of The Promise of the Land: A Passover Haggadah
Ellen Bernstein
Kos Miryam Ritual of 1987 and Kos Miryam for Pesach
Stephanie Loo, M.Ed. and Rabbinic Pastor Matia Rania Angelou
Why an Orange?
Susannah Heschel
The Freedom Plate on the Seder Table
Martha Hausman
Four New Questions for the Passover Seder
Rabbi Arthur Waskow
#FreedomSeder50:
“Making our Days Radically New as They Were 50 Years Ago”
Rabbi Phyllis Berman and Vivienne Hawkins
The Mosque and the Seder
Imam Abdul-Halim Hassan
Remember the Poor
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
“Only Prophets Can Stand Up Now…”
Reverend William Barber II
A Seder for Healthcare Workers During a Plague
Denise L. Davis, MD
Crossing the Red Sea to Create the Post-COVID World
Seventh night Seder On-Line April 14, 5780/2020
Rabbi Shawn Israel Zevit
Notes Toward Freeing the Seder
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Ph.D.
Passover & Kabbalah:
Freedom from Alien Authority, Liberty Toward Higher Purpose
Joel Hecker with Jeffrey Dekro
Liberating the Future: Passover and Beyond
Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow
