Why I’m Holding My Passover Seder In One Of The Oldest Black Churches
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(OPINION) Every year at Passover, when Jews around the world recite the Four Questions, we begin by asking, “ma nishtana halaila hazeh me kol halaylot” — “what makes this night different from all others?”
As we approach the Seders of 2025, I think that it’s also appropriate that we ask what makes this year different from all others.
My answer: I fear it might be the last year in which Jews in the United States get to ask the four questions as citizens in a country where any semblance of our fundamental rights and liberties are preserved. The events of the past few weeks under President Donald Trump’s second administration — the migrants deported to El Salvador in apparent defiance of a judge’s orders; the arrests, detainments and deportations of foreign students and researchers; and the alarming capitulation by law firms and universities — all have me deeply worried about the state of U.S. democracy.
Which is why I have decided to hold my my Passover Seder this year in one of the oldest Black churches in Chicago. A church that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad where slaves sought and found refuge on their way to what they hoped would be the promised land.
At times of crisis and uncertainty like this one, I often turn to the past, and think about how my ancestors would respond in similar situations. I know that I come from a long line of strong and resilient people — how could they not have been, to survive the horrors of chattel slavery and the brutality of life under Jim Crow?
As we confront a new era of threats to our freedom, I want to honor them. So I am going to meld one of my precious traditions — Judaism — with another — the legacy of strength and perseverance of my ancestors, who moved to freedom through Underground Railroad stops just like this church.
One Passover, a friend asked me to tell the Black Exodus story, saying they would in turn tell the Jewish one. The two stories are one and the same, I responded. My ancestors were once slaves in the American south and then they came out. Exactly like the children of Israel did thousands of years before them.
I am a Jew who has wandered. From Egypt to Alabama. My people were there.
But there are no holidays that commemorate the struggles of Africans surviving slavery, only to have to endure the dreadful perversion of “freedom” that came with Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era. This kind of freedom was in some ways actually worse than slavery.
Slavery was predictable and straightforward. Yet, the partial freedom that followed it was confusing. Freedom should’ve meant the privileges of full American citizenship, and the right, for Black people, to determine who we would be for ourselves. But that wasn’t what happened. Instead, far too frequently, when Blacks tried to embrace the idea of freedom and behaved as they believed free people did, their efforts were met with harsh rebukes, violence, and sometimes even lynching.
This is why I believe that that Passover should celebrate human freedom broadly, as well as the Jewish story particularly, and to remember how precarious liberty truly is. Especially now.
After all, we will all suffer from a crackdown on our freedom. Yet I worry that we are too busy focusing on our internal divisions to recognize the extent of the threat we all face.
“I hope that this won’t be an exercise in Israel-bashing,” an Orthodox Jewish invitee to my Seder wrote to me. And a Muslim friend wrote that she hoped that the Seder would include an acknowledgement about the “ongoing genocide” in Gaza.
This is not the first event that I’ve planned, since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023 unleashed a devastating war, at which I’ve felt like those attending intend, consciously or otherwise, to treat how I relate to Israel as a litmus test for how Jewish or how Black I am.
Too many white Jews, who already question my Judaism, insist that I publicly stand with Israel, right or wrong. Likewise, a lot of the people in my diverse Chicago community expect me to stand with the Palestinians, who they view as an oppressed minority, just like they are.
For nearly 18 months, I and many others have been trying to walk a fine line between these two positions. But not every Jewish event is or should be about the war in Gaza. And when we put that issue above all others, we eliminate the possibility of building a strong coalition to fight the authoritarianism that appears increasingly sure to come for all of us, right here at home.
In 2025, the stakes are too high for us to remain divided. And Passover is an ideal time for us to remember who we are, and what we believe in.
The brand of Judaism I practice is one that I believe could help many people understand how much we are joined, across our differences, by our shared fight to secure and preserve our freedom. Americans in the inner cities, the ones who will be hurt the most by the elimination of the social safety net and the erosion of our civil liberties, need to know that the Passover story is their story, too.
My Judaism tells me that this Passover, in this year unlike all other years, is our God given opportunity to build a movement for resistance. The world needs Passover, now. We’ve never been this close to going back to Egypt.
So, I’m sorry, we won’t be discussing Palestine or Israel at my Seder. We won’t be focusing on the things that divide us. We’ll be too busy figuring out how to stay free.
This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward’s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.
Tamar Manasseh is the founder and president of Mothers Against Senseless Killings.