New Jersey Jewish News
MetroWest Feature Story

Blacks, Jews find common ground at annual freedom seder

by Norm Oshrin
Special to NJ Jewish News

As visitors filed into Newark’s historic Ahavas Sholom for the 19th annual Passover Freedom Seder, Rich Kuperman recounted an anecdote from an earlier seder.

“Several years ago, at a synagogue in South Orange, after the event, I was collecting the Haggadas, putting them in a pile,” said Kuperman, president of the African American Jewish Coalition. “I remember a young black girl coming up to me.

“‘Where’s my Haggada, where’s my Haggada?’ she asked.

“‘Well, I probably have it here,’” Kuperman remembered responding.

“‘I have to find it. My new best friend’s phone number is on it,’” explained the girl.

The girl was Lindsey Ohen from Maplewood, now 18, who is now in the process of forming a teen coalition as an offshoot of the AAJC, which sponsors the Freedom Seder.

For Kuperman, the story dramatized what this annual event is all about: cultivating understanding and friendship between and among the members of the two communities — both of whom have struggled for freedom. And, as the seder began — as if to spotlight this commonality — there was 10-year-old Sherrod Ford-Cherry of Newark, moving from table to table, handing out kipot.

“Sitting with each other, people end up talking to people they may not ordinarily speak to,” Kuperman said. “You learn about them. Going through the Haggada, you find out we have similar backgrounds in terms of struggles for freedom.”

This year’s seder drew approximately 125 people, about half African American and half Jewish (and a few others).

“We have a large mailing list and a lot of people from organizations who follow us,” explained Kathy Davis of Irvington, AAJC’s executive director. Plus, she pointed out, a number of public officials and office holders were in attendance.

U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-Dist. 10) had stopped in before the program, Davis said, and others — among them Irvington Mayor Wayne Smith and Marcus La’Quer, Irvington’s director of public works — took part in the seder.

Following the Freedom Haggada, which includes a condensed version of the Passover ritual, the seder was conducted by Simon Rosenbach of Springfield, a rabbinical student at the Academy for Jewish Religion in Riverdale, NY, and part-time rabbi at Ahavas Sholom. Participants also read from the Haggada brief biographies of such black leaders as Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver, Harriet Tubman, and Rosa Parks.

The Freedom Haggada, this year produced in a brand-new edition, also includes a biographical sketch of Martin Luther King Jr. and a brief excerpt from his “I Have a Dream” speech. King is also the subject of an annual commemorative program hosted by the coalition. (A third coalition program — a multi-cultural event for kids that celebrates Hanukka, Kwanza, Ramadan, and Christmas — is held each December.)

“You get to know a lot of things you never knew” at the seder, said Davis. “You learn a lot about the Jewish faith. Since I’ve been involved, I also learned about Purim and the holiday you dance with the Torahs [Simhat Torah]. It promotes unity. You get to learn what other faiths are about.”

Other participants agreed. “We were slaves in Egypt; blacks were slaves in America. That’s one common bond,” said Marsha Weinstein of South Orange.

“People learn more about each other,” said Roz RosenHanst of Irvington. “When you know about someone, it’s not foreign, so there’s no reason for prejudice. When you don’t know, then there is prejudice.”

Phil Yourish of East Orange, who is executive director of the alumni association of Newark’s legendary Weequahic High School, was attending his first AAJC seder. “I thought it was interesting to attend, to see what it’s all about. Any time any group makes an attempt to bring people of different backgrounds together,” he said, it improves our community.

Seymour Farber, an AAJC board member, also shared an anecdote of an earlier Freedom Seder: “At one dinner, we served kasha varnishkes. So, next year when we were planning a dinner, Eddie Lewis, deacon of the Abyssinian Baptist Church [and an AAJC founder] told me, ‘I don’t care what you have for dinner, as long as you have those brown grits.’”

There weren’t any “brown grits” this year. But, as Kuperman — a program coordinator at Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest in East Orange — pointed out: “There were a lot of people getting hugs.”

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