Pesach edition 5784
Welcome to Weird Jewish Digest! This issue is entirely passover-themed. Some parts may look familiar from last time, but most of it is new. There are so many justice-themed haggadahs and supplements; I am not using any of them in my seder, but I’m enjoying reading several of them as I prepare to lead a seder for the first time in a few years!
Seders
Many left-wing jewish groups are coming together to host Freedom for All Seders. If you are interested in hosting one, fill out the form here for a kit.
I'm not finding as many online passover seders as I would have hoped, if I'm honest--see Where Did All the Remote Jewish Life Go? by Vanessa Pamela Friedman. But there are some. My Jewish Learning has a collection, including their second night seder linked below. Some of these events are hybrid, others are online only; some more traditional, others not. Choose your own adventure.
4.20 Secular Passover Seder from Boston Workers Circle
4.21 Freedom Shul of the Poor Passover Seder with Kairos Center and Rabbis 4 Ceasefire
4.23 Second Night Passover Seder from MyJewishLearning
4.23 Hinenu Baltimore Community Liberation Seder 5784
4.24 Miriam's Seder: A Passover Journey Through Water from Beit Kohenet
4.25 JVP Virtual Anti-Zionist Seder Towards Collective Liberation
4.28 Kadima Community Seder: Between A Sea and an Army
Haggadot
From last jewsletter: The Sephardic Brotherhood of America uploaded an entire traditional Sephardic haggadah pdf and tunes for your review, or the 2024 Asufa Haggadah, a yearly art project based on the traditional contents of the haggadah. Or consider a haggadah such as Thursday Bram's A Haggadah Of Our Own, or the antizionist queer Pillar of Fire Haggadah (now available to order as a digital download!). Besides haggadot, there's Taste and See, a psychedelic pesach zine to guide your explorations of the holiday.
Many of us have written our own haggadah cobbling together pieces from other haggadot (or on haggadot.com), but few of us have gone on to actively publish the result—check out Haggadah Min HaMeitzar from Gabriella Spitzer, or read in autostraddle about her journey writing “The Traditional and Radical Queer Haggadah [she] Wanted”.
Progressive neohasidic magazine Gashmius has put together a haggadah companion! Most of the other new supplements to the haggadah I’ve seen are specifically around contemporary Israel/Palestine events. For instance, This Broken Matzah from Bayit, on living the last six months as empathetic jews. Though I did roll my eyes a little bit at the four children analog, this seems pretty solid in general. I have also seen Truah’s supplement recommended, which has more discussion prompts and questions, or Tzedek Chicago’s Hearkening to the Voice of Gaza. For a whole haggadah along these lines, there’s JVP’s Exodus from Zionism haggadah (scroll down for the pdf).
Rabbis 4 Ceasefire also posted a list of resource collections on their instagram and linktree, including a families for ceasefire haggadah, and Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg has a lovely collection of seder resources overlapping those in this newsletter—including yet another justice-oriented haggadah supplement from members of Halachic Left, All That’s Left, and HaSmol HaEmuni.
The Shocking Creativity of the Kibbutz Haggadah was a fascinating issue of David Zvi Kalman’s Jello Menorah newsletter. I don’t condone the original kibbutz settlers’, well, settler actions; but they did some interesting stuff with the haggadah, that’s for sure, including a communist chad gadya (not to be confused with the socialist edition linked later in this email).
Israel/Palestine and Antisemitism
Some people put an olive on the seder plate to signal solidarity with and care for Palestinians.
On dayenu and enoughness, from friend of the jewsletter ada
The Passover Story Reminds Us That a Better World Is Possible, by Rabbi Steven Philp—feeling the pain of other peoples is deep within Judaism, including on Passover.
In Religion Dispatches, one author I admire quotes a book I’ve been slowly reading: Shaul Magid on Aaron Shmuel Tamares’ views on violence, power, and the tenth plague. Side note: if you want to talk about R’ Tamares and/or this book of his writings, email me! I am almost done reading it and finding the whole thing fascinating.
Miscellaneous
Chad Gadya, an Aramaic song sung at the conclusion of the seder, has been translated into an absurd number of languages and parodies, including Ḥad Ovadya (one worker), a socialist adaptation, and even a tattoo version! More of the socialist haggadah adaptation is online too, if you want additional peeks into that world.
JoC Initiative has a robust list of mostly in-person events and resources on their site from this and previous years, including chef Michael Twitty on passover and chosen family and Tlaim global cookbook zine.
Reboot recently linked to their Gefilte: It’s Not About the Fish video documenting a Detroit family’s gefilte fish tradition.
Omer counting
There are a variety of online and virtual omer counters, as well as analog ones. I like to read along with the classic A Spiritual Guide to the Counting of the Omer and have admired Jewish Language Project's multilingual omer-counting poster and other resources. Or check out Yaakov Akiva's Omer Reflections coloring book.
Maybe you want an alternate, like Rabbi Jill Hammer's Omer Calendar of Biblical Women. You can also join a live group like Omer Pulses with Nomy Lamm & Elana-June or Institute for Jewish Spirituality's Awareness in Action course. Or a dance of the omer class.
Pet of the Month
As this edition is slightly abnormal in format, so too is the pet of the week. I recently learned a bat sanctuary I follow on Instagram has a bat named mitzvah and I have chosen to honor this bat for this pet of the week/month.
See you in a couple weeks!
<3
Meli