They cannot afford to squander such an opportunity to piggyback their political agenda onto an ancient tradition.
New York, April 25 - A pro-Palestine advocacy group that purports to speak for Jews, and showcases its Jewishness to shore up its legitimacy, announced today that it has implemented an event timing change, so that its ceremonial meal to mark the start of Passover this past Monday evening will take place not on this coming Saturday afternoon, as originally planned, but tomorrow morning, owing to a scheduling conflict at the venue.
If Not Now, which seeks to dissociate Jewishness from support for Israel, informed invitees and the media late last night that the organization's somewhat annual Seder has been moved to 11 a.m. Friday, the fourth day of the weeklong festival. The group explained that a different progressive group had planned to hold its own antisemitic demonstration in the same public park, and If Not Now leadership did not want potential Seder participants to feel torn between the two events.
"With this rescheduling, we can accommodate everyone," the announcement stated.
Standard Jewish practice calls for the Passover Seder to commence after sundown on the first evening of the holiday, the fifteenth of the month of Nisan, which this year coincided with Monday. It commemorates the Exodus of the Israelites from Egyptian enslavement on that date, beginning the people's journey back to the Land of Israel. Elements of the Seder include praise of God for deliverance; laments that the Jewish temple no longer stands in Jerusalem where the Biblical service can be performed; descriptions of the Exodus itself, and the promise it holds for the oppresses in every generation; and expressed hope to celebrate the following year in a restored Jewish temple under Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem.
The Seder has long proved one of the most widely-observed Jewish rituals, and the activists at If Not Now determined long ago that they cannot afford to squander such an opportunity to piggyback their political agenda onto an ancient tradition they only interpret through contemporary politics, even if some of the key elements of the Seder, and of Jewish tradition itself, contradict the anti-Zionist underpinnings of the organization's purpose.
"Yeah, we skip all the problematic stuff," acknowledged Michael Azajoo, one of the organizers. "It's mostly in Hebrew anyway, and Hebrew is a settler-colonial language. I understand that some Seders go into the wee hours of the morning, but our won't. For one thing, it starts in the morning, and that's more convenient for anyone who works in the area, and for another, we don't bother with a lot of the older stuff that violates our values as Jews."
"Whose expression of Judaism is more authentic," he challenged: "some unbroken ancient tradition, or people who prioritize Palestinian grievances over Jewish rights?"
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