{"id":879,"date":"2025-04-15T06:08:46","date_gmt":"2025-04-15T06:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/04\/15\/jvp-hosts-passover-liberation-seder-across-street-from-hillel\/"},"modified":"2025-04-15T06:08:49","modified_gmt":"2025-04-15T06:08:49","slug":"jvp-hosts-passover-liberation-seder-across-street-from-hillel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/04\/15\/jvp-hosts-passover-liberation-seder-across-street-from-hillel\/","title":{"rendered":"JVP hosts Passover \u2018Liberation Seder\u2019 across street from Hillel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>About 100 people gathered Monday evening on the lawn of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.annarborfriends.org\/\">Ann Arbor Friends Meeting House<\/a> for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DIKmqBcPxis\/\">Passover Seder<\/a> hosted by the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/JVPUM\/\"> University of Michigan chapter<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org\/\">Jewish Voices for Peace<\/a>. The event, held on the third night of the eight-day Jewish holiday, blended traditional ritual with political messaging surrounding<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cw44wpj99v7o\"> Israel\u2019s military campaign in Gaza.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Participants wrapped in<a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/7022735\/history-of-the-kaffiyeh\/\"> keffiyehs<\/a> sat around tables and on picnic blankets arranged across the lawn. A line of posters and Palestinian flags along Hill Street read, \u201cThis is what anti-Zionist Jewish community looks like.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Wayne State student Ruby Kellman, JVP member, emphasized the importance of interpreting Jewish tradition while also considering modern-day context in an interview with The Michigan Daily.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPassover is about the continued tradition of discussing our history critically so that we understand the implications and the role of our history in our current day place as Jews,\u201d Kellman said. \u201cI\u2019m really glad that I\u2019m able to find a place to celebrate my Judaism without having to feel ostracized for not supporting a genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>The Monday night gathering was just one of many Seders organized by JVP across the United States as part of its \u201cLiberation Seders\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DIKmqBcPxis\/\">campaign<\/a> for Passover. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/bitesize\/articles\/zn22382\">Passover<\/a>, which lasts for eight days, commemorates the Israelites\u2019 escape from slavery in Egypt and their journey toward the land of Israel, as described in the Torah. The campaign aims to reinterpret the themes of the holiday, including freedom from bondage and collective liberation, in light of the ongoing Israeli military campaign in Gaza.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/bitesize\/articles\/zn22382\">\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The sedar was hosted across the street of <a href=\"https:\/\/michiganhillel.org\/\">Michigan Hillel<\/a> as they hosted their own celebrations for the holiday. In an interview with The Daily, LSA freshman Justin Baltuch, a Michigan Hillel member, said he was hurt by the timing and location of the protest.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor me as a Jewish student here, it\u2019s pretty disrespectful given that it\u2019s Passover, which should be a time for Jewish people to come together to celebrate the holiday\u201d Baltuch said. \u201cIt\u2019s just hurtful that people in our own community are actively calling for the demise of our own religion. Everybody in this country has a right to protest. You can\u2019t do anything about that. They\u2019re obviously trying to garner our attention, but them being on the front lawn \u2014 it\u2019s intentional.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>University alum Eli Hubbel explained why they chose to attend the Liberation Seder, emphasizing the importance of community-building events like this one.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPassover for me, at least, is kind of like reflecting on oppression and affliction and like what that can teach us about right now; kind of how that\u2019s repeated itself in different ways,\u201d Hubbel said. \u201c(I\u2019m here) to find Jewish community specifically, Jewish community that reflects my values. I\u2019m an anti-Zionist Jew, and that\u2019s important to me. And I just, at this point, don\u2019t really want to be in any space that isn\u2019t explicitly anti-Zionist.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>While police liaisons stood quietly at the periphery monitoring the crowd, several passersby on Hill Street yelled insults or laughed, flipping off participants as they drove by.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>During the ritual reading of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.myjewishlearning.com\/article\/the-ten-plagues\/\">ten plagues<\/a>, speakers presented a new list they called the \u201cspiritual plagues of genocidal Zionism.\u201d A JVP member read from their<a href=\"https:\/\/www.chabad.org\/holidays\/passover\/pesach_cdo\/aid\/1735\/jewish\/Haggadah.htm\"> haggadah<\/a> to the crowd while encouraging the group to \u201canoint your feet and feel the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Zelda Manela, JVP Detroit member, spoke on Israel\u2019s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, specifically the<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ohchr.org\/en\/press-releases\/2024\/03\/un-experts-condemn-flour-massacre-urge-israel-end-campaign-starvation-gaza\"> flour massacre<\/a> in 2024, while reflecting on the meaning of matzah, a traditional Jewish bread eaten during Passover to symbolize the Israelites\u2019 escape from Egypt.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I see a piece of Matzah, I think of the flour massacre on (Feb.) 29, 2024, where over 118 lives were lost and more than 700 individuals were injured while desperately searching for food after months of imposed starvation,\u201d Manela said. \u201cThe magnitude of this violence with a simple act of seeking flour that led to death reverberates in my body. But even in the face of starvation and seemingly insurmountable violence, Palestinian people resist against their oppressor.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Another JVP member, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, further criticized the University\u2019s Jewish institutions including Michigan Hillel in an interview with The Daily.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cThe Michigan Hillel is complicit in supporting the Israeli apartheid regime, and the Jewish community is not a monolith here,\u201d the member said. \u201cIt\u2019s a diversity of opinions, and there\u2019s a very strong contingent of anti-Zionism on this campus, and anti-Zionist Jewish community. My grandchildren shouldn\u2019t have to have marshals and police liaisons to be able to practice their faith in public, but we do because we\u2019re afraid of people in our own community. We\u2019re afraid of what Zionists will do to us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The JVP member further addressed what they described as a common narrative framing Jewish and Palestinian identities as inherently incompatible.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s this narrative that they have over there Hillel and other Zionist institutions around America, that it\u2019s complicated,\u201d JVP said. \u201cThey don\u2019t like us and you don\u2019t like them. It\u2019s this weird Jewish-Arab sort of struggle thing. It\u2019s a falsity. It\u2019s not real. The only way to sort of build this solidarity is through a commitment to anti-Zionism. It\u2019s through a commitment to building a future based on equality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily Senior News Editor Emma Spring can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/campus-life\/jvp-hosts-passover-liberation-seder-across-street-from-hillel\/mailto:sprinemm@umich.edu\"><em>sprinemm@umich.edu<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>About 100 people gathered Monday evening on the lawn of the Ann Arbor Friends Meeting House for a Passover Seder hosted by the University of Michigan chapter of Jewish Voices for Peace. The event, held on the third night of the eight-day Jewish holiday, blended traditional ritual with political messaging surrounding Israel\u2019s military campaign in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[967,325,963,965,964,966,663],"class_list":{"0":"post-879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-hillel","9":"tag-hosts","10":"tag-jvp","11":"tag-liberation","12":"tag-passover","13":"tag-seder","14":"tag-street"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":881,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions\/881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}