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A Message from Rabbi Maurice (April, 2007)
“Who is your favorite freedom hero and why?” These words were written on a 3” x 5” card that Melissa and I handed out at a Passover Seder we hosted a couple years ago. That night, we handed out several index cards with questions relating to the themes of the holiday – freedom, moral courage, liberation, new beginnings. We asked our guests to answer the questions on the cards during our conversations over the festive meal.
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This Passover: Freedom Heroes Then and Now
That year we decorated our living room with visual symbols of various stories of struggles for liberation from around the world. We displayed a ballot from the first free elections in South Africa in 1994 and a Hmong tapestry depicting the flight of many of their people from their native lands during the Vietnam war. In the Haggadah we read these famous words in Hebrew and English: “In every generation, each individual should feel personally redeemed from Egypt, as it is said: ‘You shall explain to your child on that day, [I observe Passover] because of what the Eternal One did for me when I went free from Egypt.’”
How real this experience is for somebody, somewhere, at every moment in history. The Passover story is a great story not because it describes something that happened to our ancestors in the past, but because it describes an aspect of reality that is constantly present in the world. Liberation from injustice is either happening somewhere in the world for real, or residing as a potential reality in the hearts of the oppressed, in every generation, in every moment.
As this newsletter goes to press, there are freedom heroes all around us. One of them is a rabbinic colleague, Rabbi Toba Spitzer of Congregation Dorshei Tzedek in West Newton, Massachusetts. In taking office this week as the new President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, Toba becomes the first openly gay or lesbian person to head a rabbinical assembly. (See the Boston Globe story at www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/03/14/a_new_voice
_among_jewish_leaders/). Another barrier of unjust exclusion gives way to the new possibilities of freedom and dignity.
Thousands of miles away, another freedom hero whose plight is not well known worries for his life in Bangladesh. His name is Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, and he is a newspaper editor who is currently facing a trial and possible execution on charges of sedition, treason, and blasphemy. Salah Choudhury is a practicing Muslim whose newspaper, The Weekly Blitz, has advocated greater dialogue and understanding between religions and has warned about the rise of Islamic extremism in his own country. His newspaper also has supported Israel’s right to exist and called for Bangladesh to have diplomatic relations with Israel. Mr. Choudhury has paid for his independent views with imprisonment, torture, and an ongoing trial that may result in his being put to death. The International Federation of Journalists, the world’s largest organization of journalists, has expressed shock and concern over beatings Mr. Choudhury has suffered and over the bombing of the newspaper’s offices last summer. The European Parliament has passed a resolution calling for his acquittal, and at the time of this writing the U.S. House, in a bi-partisan effort, passed a similar resolution by a vote of 409 to 1. If you’d like to help Mr. Choudhury win his own liberation from persecution, you can sign an on-line petition at http://spme.net/spme_petitions.html. If you are an Amnesty International supporter, as I have been for years, you may want to call their offices and ask why they have not taken up the cause of Mr. Choudhury, given that they are currently monitoring violence and repression against other journalists in Bangladesh. Their number is (202) 544-0200.
May all who dare to speak out against repression be strengthened this Passover season.
Shalom,
Rabbi Maurice
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