Photo credit: Freedom Seder Hagadah, on display at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme in Paris France, Credit: Ariel Gold
In 1969, amid the turbulence of the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War, upon realizing the first anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, Rabbi Arthur Waskow authored a new Hagaddah (a written guide to the Passover ritual meal or Seder).
Waskow’s Freedom Seder Haggadah provided a revolutionary reimagining of the traditional Passover Seder. It challenged Jews to see the Exodus story told at Passover not as a distant historical myth but as an urgent living call to action–a reminder that the fight against oppression is ongoing. It marked a turning point in Jewish liturgy and spoke not just to Jews, but to all who suffer from oppression. Pharaoh became a symbol for any force that denies human dignity, from racist laws to imperial wars. The Israelites became civil rights activists, peace protesters, and everyone yearning for freedom.
In today’s world, Pharaoh takes many forms. There are fascist autocrat Pharaohs like Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán, and Narendra Modi, who rule through fear, division, and cruelty. There is the modern bondage of student debt—an economic Pharaoh that promises opportunity but delivers chains. In corporate boardrooms, Pharaoh maximizes profit by denying basic rights like adequate healthcare and living wages. There is also Pharaoh in relentless resource extraction, pushing us toward environmental collapse while disproportionally polluting Indigenous lands and communities of color. Pharaoh takes the form of the military occupation of Palestine, demolishing homes and schools, restricting movement, jailing children, and bombing civilians indiscriminately. Other Pharaohs include voter suppression, police brutality, structural racism, and immigrant deportation. None of these systems are accidental. They are carefully designed forms of oppression, deeply embedded in law, enforced by institutions, and sustained by collective silence.
Perhaps the most dangerous modern Pharaoh is the military-industrial complex. This empire of war hides itself in a Pharaoh’s robe of national security while raking in trillions from global instability and human suffering. The merchants of death, weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Elbit, and BAE Systems, keep millions in the bondage of perpetual war. Over the past year and a half, as Israel’s war in Gaza has raged, these weapons manufacturers have provided the tools that have taken the lives of at least 50,000 people out of Gaza’s population of only two million. At least 13,000 of those killed have been children.
In the Passover story, the final plague that G-d sends is the death of the firstborn. But G-d spared the Israelites by telling them to mark their doors with lamb’s blood. Through this, they tricked the angel of death into passing over their houses, thinking he had already been there. This devastating plague struck all Egyptian households, from the firstborn of the Pharaoh himself to the firstborn of peasants who were also oppressed by the Pharoah. The utter calamity inflicted upon the Egyptians, but not the Israelites, compels Pharaoh to finally release the Israelites from slavery. The narrative, as it is written, is both a haunting symbol of desperation and divine protection and a troubling depiction of a G-d who favors one people over another.
Christians who are grounded in the radical teachings of Jesus reject the literal reading of the Gospel of John that charges the Jews with deicide (the notion that Jews are collectively and eternally responsible for the killing of Jesus). They rightfully interpret the murderer of Christ to have been the same empire, that in the Passover story was called Pharaoh, and today is the military-industrial complex, Trump, systemic racism, and so on. Likewise, Jews of conscientiousness reject the concept of a G-d who would suggest that the protection of one people can, or should, be secured through the oppression and destruction of another.
None of us can traverse out of Mitzrayim (literally meaning “narrow place,” used to describe Egypt in the Passover story) until all of us are free. In order to cross over, we must carry each other. All of us, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and more, must act to place lamb’s blood on the doorposts of all, Palestinian or Israeli, black or white, citizen or undocumented, peoples’ homes.
A better world, where none are oppressed or enslaved, won’t be achieved by divine intervention. It requires the human act of us recognizing that all people are created in the image of the divine. The blood on the doorposts isn’t blood. It’s our voices. Our refusal to stay silent. Our willingness to divest, disrupt, demand accountability, and insist that not one more bomb be supplied to Israel to slaughter children in Gaza.
We must resist the racist, Jewish supremacist, Christian nationalist ideology of Pharaohs like Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Lockheed Martin. We must proclaim loudly that war is a sin. To be an enabler of war is a sin. To be a war profiteer is a sin. To remain silent as genocide is being carried out is to commit the sin of complicity.
Seated at Rabbi Waskow’s 1969 Freedom Seder table weren’t Jews only. The chairs were filled with black Christian Civil Rights activists next to white Jewish allies. The Seder wasn’t simply a theoretical exercise. It was a direct action to defeat the Pharaoh of injustice.
This year, as Good Friday occurs during the Passover holiday, Jews, including myself, Christians, and people of many faiths, backgrounds, and traditions are joining together to confront Pharaoh at the entrance of the Lockheed Martin facility in King of Prussia, PA, outside of Philadelphia. Our bodies, as we engage in civil disobedience, will act as blood on doorposts. Together, we will express our refusal to be complicit in the US-supported Israeli genocide taking place in Gaza. We will demand protection for all children everywhere. We will sing and cry our demands: “No more Lockheed Martin weapons transfer to Israel!” Not one more mother in Gaza should have to mourn the killing of her child as Mary mourned the killing of hers on that first Good Friday. Together, in the Jewish liberatory tradition of Passover, grounded in the Christian Good Friday language of, “what you do unto the least of these, you do unto me,” we will seek to bring all of us, together, out of Mitzrayim and into the Promised Land.
