Next year in rebuilt Jerusalem: A Passover call for justice

Every spring Jews around the world gather around a seder table to commemorate the Jewish exodus from Egypt. At the conclusion of the Passover seder we utter the eternally hopeful words, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Through two thousand years of exile, Jewish people longed to return to Eretz Tzion, Yerushalayim – to Zion, the city of Jerusalem. Once Jews returned to Jerusalem in massive numbers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, people living in the sacred city concluded their seder by saying, “Next year in the rebuilt Jerusalem,” meaning next year in Jerusalem with the Temple rebuilt. Still today, seders in Israel end with this powerful phrase.

In addition to a strong emphasis on Jerusalem, another central notion in Judaism is justice. There is no Jewish ritual that better evidences the centrality of justice for the Jewish people than the Passover seder. The seder brings into relief the memory and experience that we were once slaves in the land of Egypt. Our imperative to work towards justice emerges during the seder when we say, “let all who are hungry come and eat” and when we sing avadim hayinu and remember that we were once slaves. It is precisely because we were slaves that we are responsible to ensure that never again does any individual or group experience slavery, persecution, exile, or injustice—especially at the hands of Jewish people.

The Jewish imperative for justice heightens the urgency in our quest for a more just world today. This urgency is particularly vital for those working for social change in Israel and Palestine because the actions of a Jewish state, its military, and the financial supporters of occupation policy are afflicting the Palestinian people. I witness this affliction daily as I conduct dissertation research in a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem whose access to the rest of city has been cut off by the separation barrier. Residents of the neighborhood do not have regular or easy access to work, school, health care facilities, and even their cemetery, which are located in Jerusalem. The lack of access to crucial resources has profoundly negative impacts on the neighborhood’s economy and the residents’ ability to support themselves. Worse still, families living on opposite sides of the separation barrier are separated from each other and are unable to see each other, even on holidays or special occasions. Some cases are so extreme that a father is prevented from attending the wedding of his daughter. Though it is challenging, I am compelled towards this research and work with Palestinian communities in Jerusalem specifically due to my identity as a Jew whose Judaism is shaped by the Passover imperative to work towards justice.

http://972mag.com/next-year-in-rebuilt-jerusalem-a-passover-call-for-justice/68118/