From Slavery to Freedom in 21st Century Israel
April 29, 2008
“The foreigners residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself for you were foreigners in Egypt” Leviticus 19:23
“There are many similarities between the Jewish experience thousands of years ago,” said Solomon, a young refugee from Darfur, "and what we have been through. History repeats itself. This has been a miracle for us and even though we are not Jews, this has been our Festival of Freedom. Here in Israel we feel free and we hope to stay here until it is safe to go home.”
Over 500 African refugees and Israelis attended a unique Passover seder.
Solomon was one of more than 300 African refugees who were served by nearly 200 Israelis at a special seder organized by NIF grantee Beit Tefilah Israeli (Israel House of Prayer) with support from a coalition of 15 other organizations including NIF and other grantees such as Bina: Center for Jewish Identity and Hebrew Culture and its Secular Yeshiva. Held 48 hours before the actual Passover seder, the event attracted local and international media attention including crews from CNN and Reuters.
“This was a very moving occasion for me personally,” explained Esteban Gottfried, Community Leader of Beit Tefilah Israeli, an independent liberal Jewish community in Tel Aviv comprising about 100 families from all walks of Israeli life. “It was very uplifting to see so many Israelis and African refugees dancing and singing together.”
The seder brought together Israelis and African refugees.
The participants in the seder read from a special Haggadah prepared by Beit Tefilah Israeli, which combined traditional Passover texts with contemporary songs and poetry. During the seder refugees stood up to tell their personal stories. Roma, a 15 year old boy from Sudan, spoke about his experiences of civil war and starvation. “At Passover you eat matza because you did not have time to bake bread,” he says. “But matza tastes pretty good to me because I remember when I had no food.”
The NIF family has been at the forefront of the struggle to ensure that the more than 4,000 African refugees are granted basic human rights and humanitarian assistance while they remain in Israel including food, clothing, housing and health treatment as well as the right to work. NIF strongly supported the recent establishment of the Coalition for Refugees and Asylum Seekers, which coordinates activities on behalf of African refugees.
"Each year at Passover Jews are urged to feel as if they were the very generation that came out of Egypt," observed Gottfried. "For those who attended the event in Tel Aviv, the presence of so many refugees who had reached Israel via Egypt and the wilderness of Sinai, made Passover feel very immediate."
