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At Passover Seder, African Asylum Seekers Ask: Where’s Our Freedom?
Non-alcoholic beverages, a reworded and relevant Haggadah and Bob Marley were all part of the event, held at a detention center near the Israel-Egypt border. The symbolism and irony were not lost.
Judy Maltz Apr 19, 2016 3:20 PM
HOLOT – As several hundred detained African asylum seekers, Israelis and foreign volunteers gathered under the scorching desert sky for a pre-Passover seder ceremony last week, the symbolism – or perhaps, the irony – was inescapable.
Not just because the story of liberation from slavery was recounted, as per tradition, at the seder, while many of the participants were still craving basic freedoms, but also because of the particular location of this event: barely a mile from the Egyptian-Israeli border, in close proximity to the path the ancient Israelites took on their biblical journey to freedom thousands of years ago.
This is the third year that this alternative seder was held in Holot, a detention facility that houses 3,300 asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea. The event was organized by Rabbis for Human Rights, a nonprofit that represents hundreds of rabbis and rabbinical students from across the spectrum, and a group of volunteer advocates for African asylum seekers.
For the detainees, mostly young men in their twenties, it was an opportunity to remind the Jews of their own history of persecution and the responsibilities it imposed.
“You endured slavery under the Egyptians who embittered your lives, then the Nazis came and embittered your lives,” Eritrean-born Ilave Argay told the participants, addressing them in fluent Hebrew. “With all that, the State of Israel should have been able to understand our situation and help. But it, too, has chosen to ignore the wrongs we suffered in our home countries, to cause us further suffering and to force us to return to the darkness.”
The seder fused classic elements with special features mandated by the unusual group of participants as well as the venue. As many of the asylum seekers are observant Muslims who abstain from alcohol, the traditional four glasses of wine were replaced with grape juice.
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Asylum seekers at the Holot seder, on Friday. "The State of Israel should've been able to understand. But it has chosen to return us to the darkness," said one participant.
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Rabbi Ascherman, president of Rabbis for Human Rights, leading the seder. Took special care to cite relevancies for modern times.
Received on Tue Apr 19 2016 - 12:08:15 EDT
