Freedom Haggadah: Tradition Meets Social Justice

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern and at Madlik we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria and a link is included in the show notes. This week, at the end of Shabbat, we will light the festival candles and gather for our Seder.

Today we explore Arthur Waskow’s Freedom Seder Haggadah, placing it into context and suggesting rabbinic sources. We discover that it is far more nuanced and complex than radical progressives would have us believe and that it is too rooted in rabbinic texts for traditionalists to totally ignore. So join us for the Freedom Seder, a radical midrash on the Haggadah.

So, Rabbi, I went to the Center of Jewish History where one of my booksellers actually has an open house every Thursday. I didn’t know it and I was looking for my regular kibbutz Haggadot, and I did buy a few books, but I also bought this Freedom Seder. This is the first edition. It is the size of a Mao Tse Tung red book. So you really feel, you feel like a bit of a revolutionary holding it. And I had always been intrigued by this Seder.

I think, you know, some people would say this was the beginning of the interfaith Seder, of the Seder where we used more universal terms. But as I said in the intro, I think most of the people that are using a version of it, I didn’t see that it was reprinted, redone on Amazon. I don’t know if there are new editions of it or whatever, but I said, why don’t I take a look inside of it and see what we can glean, possibly, possibly what we can find in terms of his sources, his inspiration.

And as I said in the intro, I think if you hear it quoted today, it’ll probably be. And by the way, it is a real manifesto. It’s got a lot of pages and a lot of verbiage in it. But I think the most famous part that progressives and radicals will quote is the Dayenu. The first Dayenu says, for if we were to end a single genocide, but not stop the other wars that kill men and women as we sit here, it would not be sufficient.

And the Dayenu goes and talks about arms proliferation and the environment. And then it says, at the end of the day, how much then are we in duty bound to struggle, work, share, give, think, plan, feel, organize, sit in, speak out, hope, and be on behalf of mankind, for we must end the genocide. And then it has a parentheses. In his version, it said Vietnam, but there’s an asterisk insert that is current, such as Biafra, black America, depending on the situation. And we should end the genocide in blank. Stop the bloody wars that are killing men and women as we sit there.

So I just thought that this Haggadah might be more than just that. And I was pleasantly surprised. Rabbi.

Adam Mintz [4:04 – 4:07]: Who wrote the Haggadah? Is there a name?

Geoffrey Stern [4:07 – 4:38]: Yeah, so it says Arthur Waskow. And as we’ll see, he at that point was a scholar in international relations and politics. He even goes on in the introduction in this Haggadah to say that although he grew up in a home that was Jewish, he had no use for his Judaism. He had wandered to other places. And so this was a departure for him. And the fascinating part of this departure is that because of his desire to create this first Seder, he went on and became a rabbi.

He joined in the renewal movement, which, as you know, was with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. And this Haggadah was written in 1969. It took him until 1995 to get semicha. So we are reading a Haggadah that was written by somebody live now. He is. He is. We are reading Haggadah by someone who used this Haggadah to begin his journey into our texts, into our studies. And that by itself has to be fascinating.

What happened was he lived in Washington, D.C. and as I said in the intro, Martin Luther King Jr. Was literally assassinated a few days before the Seder. I looked it up in a calendar, and you’re going to see why in a second. And that year, the Seder was not like this year on a Saturday night. It was Friday night.

But in any case, he found himself preparing at the Seder that occurred a few days after King’s assassination for the next Passover. Even that I found intriguing, Rabbi. We all spend so much time preparing for The Seder, we might think, as we’re sitting on the Seder, that we’re preparing for next year’s Seder, that we have to remember comments and thoughts that we had. So he found himself preparing at that Seder right after King was assassinated.

And he dug out his old Haggadah and he started going through it. And he wrote this, I would say Midrash Commentary Manifesto. And when he finished, he sent it to a Rabbi, Harold White, who was a rabbi in D.C. and he says, is this a crazy obsession or a good idea? And this Rabbi White answered him. It’s an activist midrash on the Haggadah. You have taken this story into your own hands, as the Rabbi said God wanted the fleeing slaves themselves to do.

Do you know that Midrash? He says, talking about the Nachshon Midrash, the one where God refuses to split the Red Sea until one activist has gone into the water up to his nose, about to drown. So Waskow claims he didn’t know the word midrash. And this rabbi explained to him that what you have done in this booklet is created a midrash. And so today we’re going to take a look at the midrash that he started.

I have to say that the Freedom Haggadah was not the only book that I purchased. I also purchased this book by Yosef Yerushalmi, which has all the Haggadot. Good. So you will find on folio number 193, he has from Santiago, Chile, a third Seder. And what Yerushalmi writes is that there was a tradition that people, communities would have a third Seder most of the time after the State of Israel was formed, it was an activist seder to send money, collect money for the State of Israel.

So even here, the year after, the one that this Haggadah was written for was a third Seder. Rabbi, he made a third Seder. In a sense, he was part of that tradition as well. And he writes in the beginning. And I think this kind of summarizes the tension and the nuance that he has throughout the Haggadah. He says, for us, this Haggadah is deeply Jewish, but not only Jewish. In our world, all men face the Pharaohs who could exterminate them any moment and so enslave them all the time.

Passover, therefore, fuses for an instant with the history and the future of all mankind. But it fuses for an instant, and in the fusion, it does not disappear. Pay attention. The particularly Jewish lives within the universally human. At the same time that the universally human lives within the particularly Jewish. I think we’re going to find throughout this Haggadah, at least the sections that I identify that he has as a commitment to the particularity of the Jewish people and our story, as he does have, to the universalism.

And I will argue that those who take this freedom Haggadah—

Geoffrey Stern [9:14 – 9:34]: and his Freedom Seder and can only see the universality have lost what was part of his struggle and part of what makes this Haggadah so great. So, first of all, were you at the Seder? Did you ever meet this guy, Arthur Waskow? Can you add?

Adam Mintz [9:34 – 10:42]: Rabbi, so I don’t know Arthur Waskow, but I’m going to tell you the following. Growing up, I grew up in Washington, D.C. and my parents hosted the Seder every single year. And during these years, the 60s, the 70s, the early 80s, we had a Seder. My aunt and uncle were members of the SAJ, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. It was the Reconstructionist community. And they were involved, at least adjacent, at least tangentially, to the renewal movement.

And they used to bring these different Haggadahs to the Seder every year. They brought the Freedom Seder Haggadah. They brought the New American Haggadah. Right? That’s another renewal or Reconstructionist Haggadah. And I remember that my father would always… my father was Orthodox, but he was always fascinated by these new takes on the Haggadah. So I feel, Geoffrey, as if you’re bringing me back to my youth.

Geoffrey Stern [10:42 – 11:13]: Oh, wow. That’s a privilege. So the first thing I noticed is he gives a list of things that you need at the Seder, and he says two unlit candles. And that kind of raised something in my mind because, of course, we did a whole episode just on lighting the Friday night candles and the meaning of it, how it was a revolution in and of itself. And I think what we’re going to find is either you’re going to accuse Waskow—

Geoffrey Stern [11:13 – 11:44]: of coming in and looking at the Seder and not doing what you do when you read an ArtScroll, which is it says, “Include this for Shabbat, don’t say this on Friday night, say this on Saturday night.” And you could accuse him of just going through it and including everything and throwing in the kitchen sink, because you’ll see in a second that the kiddush that he has is the one that we are going to say on Saturday night, this coming Saturday night.

But I think that actually his third Seder that he had was on a Friday night, and the year before, it actually was on a Saturday night. And these prayers of introducing havdalah into the kiddush affected him deeply.

Geoffrey Stern [11:44 – 12:14]: And I also think we’re going to see in a second this concept of lighting the candles, having to wait for the seder to begin to light the candles, which I think you’ll confirm we have to do this year. We can’t light them early because it’s Shabbat. So we have to wait for Shabbat to be out. We’re going to have two unlit candlesticks, and only when Shabbat is out can we transfer a light from a candle that we have sitting on the side and do exactly what he has. So I think even from that perspective, we’re in for a little bit of a treat.

Geoffrey Stern [12:14 – 12:45]: I put in the Hebrew here from Sefaria. He doesn’t have any Hebrew in his Haggadah. It’s all transliterated Hebrew. But as you know, we start “Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Haolam,” king of the world, who has chosen our people, “Asher bachar banu mikol ha’amim v’romemanu mikol lashon” and made us different with every language.

Geoffrey Stern [12:45 – 13:15]: And he goes on and assumes that we’re using the one that we’re going to say on Saturday night. But now I want to read his translation. And here we are. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has made of one earth, one flesh, all the peoples of the world, who did exalt mankind by breathing the life of the mind and the love of freedom into him, who did sanctify us so that we might know and say what was holy and profane.

Geoffrey Stern [13:15 – 13:46]: So, Rabbi, I looked at the original prayer, and I said, where did he get all of this from? And my interpretation is he focused on the word “Melech Haolam.” It’s a word that we pass over, no pun intended, much too quickly, that God is the universal God of the whole world. And of course, “olam” can mean eternal, and “olam” can be peoples of the world. I took this to be Waskow’s meditation and stopping us in the middle of the bracha to talk about the universality of every blessing that we make, which at the end of the day is “Melech Haolam,” king of the whole world. What do you think of that?

Adam Mintz [14:15 – 14:28]: First of all, that’s great. Now, obviously, “Melech Haolam” is not special for the kiddush. The “Melech Haolam” is in every bracha. So what he’s saying here actually applies to everything that’s Jewish.

Geoffrey Stern [14:29 – 17:03]: I agree. I agree. And it wakes us up to that. Then he goes on. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, who with love has allowed us to give ourselves and the solemn days of joy, festivals and seasons of gladness. Blessed art Thou, our Lord, who didst allow Israel to imagine this day. Now, the word imagine I had a little trouble finding because I think that in the Hebrew it would be “asher hinchaltanu.” And “hinchaltanu” is more of a nachala. It’s more of something that you inherit. But I do believe that what he is arguing here is that in terms of how God created man, he created man, and this gets back to our discussion of Harvey Cox, with the ability to imagine the future and remember the past, to celebrate holidays. And that is truly human.

So it enables Israel to imagine this day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the season of our freedom, our holy convocation, a memorial of the departure from Egypt. Blessed art Thou, our Lord, who sanctifies mankind, freedom, Israel, and the seasons. Blessed art Thou, our Lord, our God, King of the universe, who makes a distinction between holy and holy, between the holiness of this festival and that of the Sabbath, between the holiness of light and the holiness of darkness, between the holiness of the Jewish people and the holiness of other peoples. And then he comes up with this blessing, blessed art Thou, O Lord, who has made all peoples holy and has commanded us, even against our will, to become a beacon for justice and freedom for them all.

So, as I said in the intro, he’s not shying away from the fact that this is an intrinsically, passionately Jewish document. But he also doesn’t flinch from including in that the universality. So he says, we are a chosen people, but we, even against our will, have to be a light unto the nations, a beacon for justice and freedom for them all. I really. And as I said before, he chose to use the full kiddush with the havdalah in it, either because that was the one he read that night after King was assassinated because that Seder was the same, Saturday night was a Saturday night, or he just found it so beautiful. But we will be saying this exact kiddush, please God, on Saturday night.

Adam Mintz [17:03 – 18:07]: So I want to talk about distinguishing between the holiness of the festival and that of Shabbat. In Hebrew, you say “hamavdil bein kodesh l’kodesh.” That’s a very strange notion because, you know, we make havdalah every Saturday night. When we make havdalah on Saturday night, we say we distinguish between holy and mundane. That means distinction. That means havdalah.

It’s funny to distinguish between holy and holy. Why does holiness need a distinction? Why don’t we just say everything is holy? One thing is holy this way, one thing is holy that way. The answer, I think, is that everyone is holy in a unique way, and Jews are holy in their way, and other people are holy in their way. And I think that’s the point that he’s making. I think that’s the point that Waskow is making; it is true that everybody is holy, but we’re not all holy in the same way.

Geoffrey Stern [18:07 – 18:38]: I absolutely love it. And I think that’s exactly what I was going to say. He’s coming at here. He kind of, you know, the Reform have changed this bracha of making us chosen.

And they kind of water it down, who has chosen all mankind. And he doesn’t shy away from saying that all of us are holy. You know, Shlomo Carlebach used to say, and Adam, my holy brother, and Joseph, he called everybody holy. But being holy doesn’t mean that you can’t be holy in a different way. And I love that.

Geoffrey Stern [18:38 – 19:08]: And it doesn’t mean that some of us don’t have a mission that we have to do. So, I do absolutely love that. Later on in the Seder, he tells an amazing story about a Rabbi Mendel. He’s quoting Buber. He must have been influenced by Buber’s book, that I was influenced by at the same time, “Tales of the Hasidim.” And he says, make all of us tonight, when we speak, inform our speech from the silent stillness, the depth of Rabbi Mendel.

Geoffrey Stern [19:08 – 19:39]: He tells the story about a rabbi who wouldn’t speak. The only night of the year that he would speak would be at the Seder. So he compares and contrasts this Rabbi Mendel the silent. And when we are silent, may we inform our silence from the speech, the conversation, the sharing of Rabbi Akiva, Tarfon and the rest. So he has these two contrasting images of a rabbi who doesn’t speak normally and the rabbis who are in B’nai Brak talk about the exodus from Egypt till the morning.

Geoffrey Stern [19:39 – 20:09]: And then what he does is he creates a new ritual. Before we light those two candles, he says there shall be a few minutes of quiet in which all the lights are doused. And the reader says, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates darkness and commands us to meditate in silence.” So he’s about to start the Seder. He’s now going to light the candles, but they’re not lit yet. And he takes advantage of the darkness.

Geoffrey Stern [20:09 – 20:40]: Then the reader lights the candles and says, “Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates the light of the fire and commands us to converse with each other about the departure from Egypt.” So he takes light and darkness as an analog for silence and speech in a beautiful way. And I have to say, Rabbi, every week I publish the notes of our discussions on Sefaria. The most popular note that I’ve ever published is where I say that Ha Lachma Anya tells us to start the Seder with the sound of a ha.

Geoffrey Stern [20:40 – 21:10]: And I talk about God created the world with a hey, and all we have to do is breathe out. And something about it has 6,400 views. And I think what he’s doing, it’s right here. I took a screenshot. So, I think we’re adding a new one today. Another nonverbal ritual that we can add for especially those of us who love to meditate, who think that there’s more to the Seder than just words. We can pause a second before we light those candles. We can savor the darkness and the silence of the darkness.

Geoffrey Stern [21:10 – 21:41]: And then we can light those candles and let the games begin. The discussion begins. Thank you, Rabbi Waskow. Okay, so I thank him for that. Then what he does is he says, everyone then eats this piece of parsley, then breaks the Afikoman. And when he does the Ha Lachma Anya, he says, “Let all who are hungry eat thereof. And all who are in need come and celebrate the Passover.” He opens up the door. At that moment, as our door is open, may not only the hungry come, but also the spirit of the prophet Elijah.

Geoffrey Stern [21:41 – 22:11]: Rabbi, it makes a lot more sense that you fill the cup of Elijah at the beginning of the Seder and you open up the door to your fellow Jews. So I Googled. I said, is there a custom? And sure enough, I found, according to the Abarbanel, Ha Lachma Anya should be recited at the entrance of the house with the door open so that paupers can hear the invitation. Enter. See ArtScroll Rabbi Chaim Volozhin. I found it. Now.

Adam Mintz [22:32 – 22:34]: That’s great. Okay.

Geoffrey Stern [22:34 – 22:37]: Have you heard that tradition? Have you ever seen that tradition?

Adam Mintz [22:37 – 22:41]: That’s great. I’m going to share it in our Seder this year and say it again.

Geoffrey Stern [22:41 – 24:16]: Thank you, Rabbi Waskow. We are just picking up new rituals, new ways of doing our Seder. Then he gets to next year in the land of Israel. And by the way, if you do look at that Chaim Yerushalmi book, you will see that there are haggadot that say next year in Jerusalem. And there are haggadot that say next year in the land of Israel. So Waskow, as the tradition says, hashta hacha leshana haba ba’ara d’Yisrael. This year we celebrate here, but the next year we hope to celebrate in the land of Israel.

And as another tradition says, UBI liberatus ibi patria, where there is liberty, this is my country, this is my Israel. For where are we sitting tonight? In Jerusalem, we would still say next year in Jerusalem. For this year, not only we, but all men are slaves and aliens. Next year we hope that all men shall be free. This year all men eat as aliens in a land not wholly theirs. We hope all men will celebrate in, quote, unquote, the land of Israel that is in a world made one and a world made free.

So here too, I will argue, Rabbi, that he’s retaining the actual land of Israel, and he’s also talking about a metaphoric land of Israel. And he makes an argument. He says, if you’re reading the Haggadah in Israel or in Jerusalem, you still say bashana haba b’ara di Yisrael. Now, some of the Haggadahs change that, and they say bashanna haba b’yerushalayim habanuya. But they do it for this problem.

Adam Mintz [24:16 – 24:24]: Now, Yerushalayim habanuya comes at the end of the Seder. So, you know, we have. But we don’t start with Yerushalayim.

Geoffrey Stern [24:25 – 26:32]: So I think he makes a good point. And when you’re in Akko, you’re going to say this, I assume you’re going to say at this point in time, which means that there’s more than just the stones and the mortar, that it represents something. And I think that is a fascinating point. But again, I will argue that he does that not at the expense of Israel, but to complement Israel. There’s a real Jewish people, there’s a real land of Israel, and there’s something that it is more than that.

So now he starts telling the story of the Exodus, and he actually quotes another reader. But he gets to the point where Moses is a prince of Egypt and discovers what he determines to be his brothers fighting amongst themselves. There’s a taskmaster who’s hitting them. So he goes ahead and he kills the taskmaster. He buries him in the sand. And the next day, when he sees two fellow Jews fighting, he approaches them and says, what are you fighting about?

So, in this reading, he says when they come back to him and they go, what are you going to kill us too, the way you killed the Egyptian yesterday? He says, then he learned meaning. Moses learned two things that those who try to help their fellow men often discover. He found first, that slaves often spend as much time and energy fighting each other as they do fighting their common oppressors. And second, that slaves do not always welcome their deliverers.

This is spoken as a revolutionary who’s not afraid to let down his guard. To say, you know, this business of changing the world, it’s not as simple and straightforward as we make it sound to be. We fight amongst ourselves. We’re the first and the most. We are the most, I would say, passionate about fighting amongst ourselves. And we don’t always really want to be delivered. We could rather be a radical than to be delivered. I just found that to be so honest and also fascinating.

Adam Mintz [26:33 – 26:39]: It’s great. And it really gives the, you know, the flavor of the ’60s, which we don’t feel now. Maybe we need more of that now.

Geoffrey Stern [26:39 – 27:10]: Yeah. So the burning bush again, his interpretation of that is that Moses had fire kindle in his heart once, but it went out. He said, I’m out of here. I’m going to be a herdsman with Jethro.

He sees the bush that does not stop burning, which is the sign from God that God says, I have seen the affliction of the people, they are in Egypt and have heard their cry. It was the physical, economical, spiritual suffering. And what God is saying is the voice that came out of the bush said, I am burnt up about this, and I’m never going to stop being burnt up about this. Waskow goes into a long thing that says the whole purpose of religion is to make sure that we always stay burnt up about the bad things in the world.

So the last thing that I want to talk about, Rabbi, we were privileged to be at a lecture at Hadar early last week. And there is a famous saying in the Mishnah that says that you need to start the Haggadah by talking about genut, which translates to be disgraceful, and you have to messayem bishvach, and you have to conclude with glory. The amazing lecture that we heard focused on the Joseph story as being our disgrace. And the argument of Rabbi Tali Adler was that we can talk about our failings at the same moment as we talk about redemption.

So this is what Waskow does. First of all, he focuses us on the word Tzeh U’lmad, go out and learn. He uses that as an excuse that we can not only go out and learn; he says, search further and inquire what our own fathers, Moses and Joshua, intended to do to our brothers the Canaanites. So he brings up not only that we were once idol worshipers and that the world has done terrible things, but also that we wanted to conquer the land. He uses this Tzeh U’lmad as a license for us to discuss things that aren’t so great about us.

I think in the context of hearing the lecture last week and this, it adds a whole new aspect. We know we always say, and I do, when we start a Seder, every question is, okay, you can say whatever you want. There’s nothing off the table. But what does it happen when we talk about our own misgivings, our own shortcomings? I think what he’s done, and he has a whole list, they really, not so much only the Jewish people, but the shortcomings of society. He does it all from this concept of Tzeh U’lmad, which I will argue is an extension of what the Talmud says, starting with genut or. I just think it opens up a whole conversation.

These classes that we do every year are the best classes of the whole year. I don’t blame the people who like them.

Fantastic. So the last thing that I’m going to do, and this might be the most surprising, is he talks about a lot, and this is quoted by the progressives about nonviolence and how nonviolence is the only answer. But I think what they fail to miss is about seven pages where he talks about the plagues, and he says, freedom is not bloodless. He talks about the prophets who say, when we do bad things, bad things are going to happen to us. He talks about Shofet Nat Turner and Judge Lincoln, that if every drop of blood be vast. Then he talks about Emmanuel Ringenblum and the Warsaw Ghetto. He talks at length, saying that we had to stand up and defend ourselves, and there is a time where you have to take up arms to defend yourself and even to go down fighting.

May we remember and honor tonight and at every Passover, the bleak and hopeless courage of those who, during the week of Passover in 1943, began the Ghetto uprising in Warsaw. So we’ve run out of time, but we should do that because it’s a Seder, we could go on all night. I encourage you to try to, as there is a link in the show notes to the full Haggadah. There’s a PDF, I encourage you to study this Haggadah, learn some lessons. You won’t agree with everything, but I think you will be surprised. Just keep in mind that the guy who wrote this then took on a journey to discover his own Judaism and become a rabbi. This was the starting point. He was so inspired by not what he said, but what he studied.

Fantastic. This is amazing. I believe, Geoffrey, that everyone should remember when they say “halakhma anya,” to just go, huh, to exhale and take everything in from there. Enjoy your family, enjoy everyone’s seders, and we look forward. Next week we’re off for the holiday, but in two weeks, we look forward to seeing everybody. Be well. Amazing.