Editorial Note: The Commons is pleased to publish a multi-religious overview of reflections from Muslim, Christian, and Jewish perspectives as part of the encampment at Cornell University, especially as it occurred in the Spring of 2024. The students’ voices included here represent both a continuation of the “1970 Freedom Seder” at Cornell, as well as its ongoing life in the midst of current events in Gaza.
Related Posts:
1970 Freedom Seder organizer Jack Goldman reflects on its impact.
“The Cornell Liberated Zone and its Afterlives” From the Series: Counter Archives: Filed Notes from the Encampments.
by Eliza Salamon
Growing up, one of my favorite parts of the Passover Seder was the singing of “Dayenu” – it would have been enough. At each moment of exodus, when God frees the Jewish people from slavery, we repeat this: it would have been enough to bring us out of Egypt, to part the Red Sea, to give us the Torah. I’ve always appreciated this reminder to be grateful for the small triumphs, for the process, and not the end result. But still, I wonder—where would we be if left at these intermediaries?
In Waskow’s words, “…a Freedom Seder should be not only a ritual remembrance, not only a shared promise for the future, but itself a political act,” I saw reflected our desire to use Jewish values and teachings to be in solidarity with Palestine.
Rabbi Arthur Waskow appears to ask a similar question in his 1969 Freedom Haggadah. This Haggadah was written following the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.; Waskow felt Passover needed to commemorate not only the Jews’ ancient liberation but also speak to the modern liberation struggles of the civil rights movement and against the Vietnam War. That first Freedom Seder was held in the basement of a Black church in D.C. The next year, 1970, Waskow led the second Freedom Seder at Cornell University.
Last winter, in my senior year at Cornell, I heard about the Freedom Seder for the first time. It was beshert—meant to be—as my mom would say. It was a complicated and fraught time to be an anti-Zionist Jewish student actively organizing with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in protest of Israel’s ongoing occupation and genocide of Palestinians. Discovering the Freedom Seder’s history, particularly at my very school, felt to me the perfect way to orient an observance of Passover to the Palestinian liberation struggle.
The 1970 Freedom Seder at Cornell was held in Barton Hall, the indoor track house. By some accounts, up to 10,000 students squeezed inside, sitting on the ground with cups of wine and listening to Waskow and student organizers lead the Seder.
It was the height of campus protests against the Vietnam War and the university-military connections running deep through Cornell—and the Freedom Seder was the kickoff to a weekend of countercultural, anti-war events titled “America is Hard to Find.” The weekend honored Father Daniel Berrigan, who was on the run from the FBI for burning draft cards as one of the Catonsville Nine; he had served for a few years prior as assistant director of Cornell United Religious Works. In the middle of the seder, Berrigan pulled up to Barton Hall on a motorcycle and surprised the ecstatic crowd.
Later, he disappeared inside a giant costume belonging to the Bread and Puppet Theater with reports of undercover agents positioned all around the room. It was a few more months before he was finally found and arrested.
Over the years, the Freedom Seder has been adapted to address contemporary issues of oppression and liberation. Reading through Waskow’s original Haggadah, though, I was surprised by how applicable it felt to the current moment. I decided that Cornell JVP must host its own Freedom Seder.
For years prior, I had tended to avoid established organized Jewish life at Cornell, out of discomfort with their hard line on Zionism and utter unwillingness to engage with anti-Zionist students. I had resorted to hosting Jewish holidays in the living room of my off-campus apartment—friends, Jewish and otherwise, squeezed onto the floor with bowls of matzo ball soup on their laps.
I saw what I, what we, had been trying to do and say for months reflected in the Freedom Haggadah. In the condemnation of the corporate greed and tyranny of the Dow Chemical Company, and the undergraduate referendum on divestment from weapons manufacturers. I saw how Waskow’s words (“…a Freedom Seder should be not only a ritual remembrance, not only a shared promise for the future, but itself a political act”) reflected our desire to use Jewish values and teachings to be in solidarity with Palestine. And later, in the words, “The freedom we seek is a freedom from blood as well as a freedom from tyrants,” I saw our attempts to prefigure a radical world of mutual liberation.
The 2024 Freedom Seder was organized by a small group of students over a few months in between protests, sit-ins, and arrests. We found a space on campus, a terrace overlooking Cayuga Lake, to set up our seder. We invited the whole community and I was afraid nobody would show up. As the day grew closer, we hit 150 rsvps. The weekend before the first night of Passover, we spent hours chopping apples for charoset, shredding onions and potatoes for kugel, and making literally hundreds of matzo balls.
The night arrived, and I sat with the rest of JVP at the head of a huge semicircle of people. I looked out at the sun setting behind the lake, at friends, comrades, professors, and total strangers. Many of the people there I would have never met if not for our common goal and struggle; and for many, it was their first seder.
I thought about my childhood love for singing Dayenu and then I read Waskow’s version—one more difficult, but vastly more hopeful, liberatory, and expansive:
For if we were to end a single genocide but not to stop the other wars that are killing men and women as we sit here, it would not be sufficient;
If we were to end those bloody wars but not disarm the nations of the weapons that could destroy all mankind, it would not be sufficient;
If we were to disarm the nations but not to end the pollution and poisoning of our planet, it would not be sufficient;
If we were to end the poisoning of our planet but not prevent some
people from wallowing in luxury while others starved, it would not be Sufficient;
If we were to make sure that no one starved but were not to end police brutality, it would not be sufficient;
If we were to end outright police brutality but not to free the daring poets from their jails, it would not be sufficient;
If we were to free the poets from their jails but to cramp the minds of people so that they could not understand the poets, it would not be Sufficient;
If we liberated all men and women to understand the free creative poets but forbade them to explore their own inner ecstasies, it would not be Sufficient;
If we allowed men and women to explore their inner ecstasies but would not allow them to love one another and share in the human fraternity, it would not be sufficient.
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, stop the bloody wars that are killing men and women as we sit here, disarm the nations of the deadly weapons
that threaten to destroy us all, end the poisoning of our planet, make sure that no one starves, stop police brutality, free the poets from their jails, educate us all to understand their poetry, allow us all to explore our inner ecstasies, and encourage and aid us to love one another and share in the human fraternity. All these!
All these! I am bound to this struggle, this future, and this community, and that duty commands me to stand, speak, and act. I do this, I am able to do this, because there is so much history to build upon and build anew.
A few days following the Freedom Seder, in the middle of the night, a few tents appeared on the main campus quad.
Encampment Shabbat Reflection
by Jacob Berman
Since I arrived on the Cornell campus, I tried to attend Hillel services and shabbos events, but the constant pressure by the Hillel rabbis to fuse Zionism with Jewish faith practices left me with a bad taste in my mouth. After October 7th, it became clear to me that I could no longer sit through sermons espousing a duty to uphold Zionism and to protect Israel at all costs.
As of April 2024, I had already been an active member of the newly formed JVP on campus and a key supporter of the encampment. In between working safety shifts at the odd hours of the night and dealing with verbal abuse from zionist counter protesters, I and a handful of JVP members worked to host the first encampment shabbat. After nearly three days of very little sleep, the event came together perfectly, with warm matzah ball soup being served on the grass, along with huge boxes of matzah (as it was still passover) which had been donated by local community members. A group of twenty-five of us sat around on blankets, reading through the traditional shabbat service, and breaking up the prayers with excerpts of poems, stories, and anecdotes that put into context the reason for holding this shabbat within the bounds of the encampment. For the first time in nearly two years, I felt reconnected to a Jewish community which I thought I had lost. As I sat there singing, praying, and conversing with my comrades, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, I felt something I hadn’t since October 7th: hope.
Encampment Reflection (Jummah)
by MM
On Friday April 26, 2024—one day after the start of the encampment at Cornell—Cornell Muslim Life (CML) partnered with the Muslim Education and Cultural Association to perform Jummah (Friday) prayers outside by the encampment—both as a stance of support with the Rafah solidarity encampment and a platforming of spiritual sanctity that the community had to provide. I remember the blades of grass that day, kneeling down on the carpet by rakkah just to feel the moist soil beneath my forehead. I had not prayed outside in seven years, not since I immigrated from Saudi Arabia. I remember the safe presence of my non-muslim friends, watching our backs every time we knelt. I remember the people filming us and the hostile stares and the people skateboarding loudly or yelling past us despite the many sidewalks that the arts quad offered.
What we were doing that day was clear as day in its intention, but was not enough to demand their respect or the request to walk a little softer on this earth while we prayed for the children and lives lost in the genocide in Gaza. Despite that experience, I still hope for a future where I can have many more prayers on the grass with my Muslim and non-Muslim sisters and brothers alike, kneeling down in humility with the knowledge that we who are more alike than unalike have gone suffering far too long alone.
Encampment Reflection (Orthodox Lent)
by JP
I was observing Great Lent during most of the encampment at Cornell. Great Lent is a time for Orthodox Christians for self-examination and repentance. I am a catechumen currently in the process of converting. I was introduced to Orthodox Christianity by my Palestinian friend at Cornell. During the encampment, I was mostly on the night shift protecting the encampment, and I would listen to Christian music and Orthodox chants to uplift my spirits. Since it was Great Lent, sometimes I would read the bible at the entrance of the encampment, and if anyone wanted to read the bible with me or talk about Christianity, they were always welcome to do so. One of my comrades, who mentioned that he was interested in Orthodox Christianity, was stressed, so I offered my bible, and he read some scriptures.
I think with my activism online, non-Orthodox Christians have questioned my Christianity and have asked me, “Why don’t you just pray?” I do pray, but my activism helps turn my prayers into actions. I have also had rude comments where people try to weaponize my religion against me for simply supporting Palestine. Comments from Zionists such as “Do you know what will happen to you in Gaza as a Christian?” have been said to me unprovoked. I think those comments come with an assumption that there isn’t a small Christian Palestinian community in Gaza and other places in Palestine. Many Christians in Palestine are Orthodox Christians. Christians in Palestine are constantly facing harassment and persecution, and a lot of that is due to the Israeli Regime. Israel has bombed the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church in Gaza City more than once, with the most recent attack being in July. Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church is the third oldest church in the world. Back in October, Israel bombed the church, and a large number of people were killed and injured. Israel has also targeted other churches in Gaza. A Baptist church was bombed, and an Israeli sniper killed two Christian women and injured others in a Catholic church in December in Gaza. The churches are currently sheltering displaced people. Hearing things like “We were baptized here, and we will die here” when the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church got bombed broke my heart. Palestinian Christians in Gaza are facing extinction. There’s no better way to spend Lent than advocating for my fellow Christian sisters and brothers in Palestine.
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Eliza Salamon is a recent Cornell graduate and organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace. She is currently working as an educator in Ithaca, NY. She is a proud and permanent citizen of the Diaspora.
Jacob Berman (He/They) is a fourth year at Cornell University studying Anthropology. Deeply interested in the connections between Jewish cultural practices in the diaspora and ecological futurism, he is active in Jewish anti-Zionist spaces on campus and in the Southern Tier region of New York.
JP is an Orthodox Christian Catechumen. She comes from a family with a Protestant and Roman Catholic background. She proposed that Orthodox Christians at Cornell lead an encampment prayer.
MM is a senior at Cornell and a Muslim Arab from Philadelphia.
