Passover Seder - Evergreen Hillel - Olympia, WA - April 25th, 2011

       What is Passover? Passover is the celebration of God's liberation of the Jews from Egypt in the Torah. In the celebration symbolic food and drink is partaken of. For example a bitter food for the yoke of enslavement, a sweet food for freedom, meat (in this case a beat though) in the form of a lamb used to symbolize the blood on every door to spare the Jews from the Angel of Death, who was the final plague...

     That's the information on what it is...but the experience of it was so much more, as well as what it can mean beyond a wikipedia definition.

      I arrived an hour late due to my arrival on campus being while the Passover Seder had already begun. When I arrived the prayers where going on, and would be continuing for another hour and a half. Each of us read passages from the Passover Prayerbook and read some sections as a group.

    The book was made in 1985 and was a collection of Jewish Passover prayers, words from people fighting injustice (Martin Luther King Jr., Desmond Tutu, Refugees, Holocaust victims) all of them mirrored what the Jews were experiencing in the story of Exodus. It reminded everyone present what still needed to be done and the innate call for freedom that all people long for (as well as the resistance of those when free idealizing the past oppression - example, the whining in the desert).

   Each drink and special food had a prayer. It's amazing the awareness that comes with the simple act of ritual and prayer. I remember the process of eating each dish and drinking each drink so clearly...there was so much gratitude and reverence in the people around me and within myself.

   During the time of the meal proper was a time of growing community even more. I talked with a few friends there about Doctor Who after finding out they were Whoheads to. I talked to my friend, the leader of Hillel about the Interfaith Workshop I'm co-sponsoring that he is going to be a member as well. Letting him know the 2 main themes of the event (Abraham and the difficulties in Interfaith dialogue) This went on for sometime before the discussion of what Passover might mean.

    The leader of Evergreen Hillel and my friend proposed it showed the evolution of God. God does act immature through much of Torah, His growth is gradual and becomes more and more aware and compassionate towards the people, all people. This is a stark contrast to the genocide in Noah.

   Another was the Exodus story as a metaphor for our own liberation. That Moses represents the subconscious as Aaron represents God and our higher self versus Pharaoh who represents the Ego. The story of liberation is us freeing ourselves.

    Then there is the implied meaning that was in the prayerbook. That it is the story of God seeking to free all people from slavery and that the Jews in the story represent the oppressed people everywhere in the world in all times. The story is a call to action to not be oppressors and to have compassion for the oppressors and oppressed and to free the oppressed.

   Hearing the story of the people complimented by people who I knew from history made the event even richer, as did my conversations.

  So happy Passover to all...may we all do more to end suffering wherever it may be (within ourselves or in those around us) and help others to freedom.