A group of teen-agers, some Jewish, some African-American, gathered last night in the basement of a Bolton Hill synagogue to celebrate a pre-Passover Seder expressing two themes shared by their respective cultures: enslavement and liberation.
The 50 youths at the Bolton Street Synagogue performed traditional Seder rituals, including eating bitter herbs, drinking four cups of wine (grape juice in this case), breaking the matzo and asking the question, "Why is this night different from all other nights?"
But the ritual was interspersed with symbols from African-American culture and references to historical and cultural figures such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., George Washington Carver and Maya Angelou. Alongside the story of the Israelites' slavery in Egypt and the Exodus were accounts of African slavery in America.
The Seder, normally celebrated on Passover, which begins Wednesday at sundown, was sponsored by the Black/Jewish Forum of Baltimore (BLEWS). It was the first event in what will be a two-year BLEWS Youth Initiative involving about 1,500 African-American and Jewish students in educational and social activities and community service.
"The program is educational in the sense that it will expose these young people to the histories and issues of the African-American and Jewish communities, including the history of cooperation between the two communities," said Bernard L. Berkowitz, BLEWS president.
For both black and Jewish youths, the experience last night was a window into the other's culture -- a culture that is perhaps alien and perplexing.
Rachel Curry, 17, is a Northwestern High School senior who lives in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Upper Park Heights.
"Because I live in a predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, now I understand more about their culture," she said. "Now I can understand what they do at Passover and some of their prayers."
Shared rituals
Ben Paley, 15, a ninth-grader at Beth Tfiloh Community School, said the Seder gave him an opportunity to share a ritual that most people who aren't Jewish don't get a chance to experience.
"I have tons of friends who are black," he said. "But they don't come over for Friday night to spend Shabbat."
Members of BLEWS wrote a Haggada, a Seder prayer book, that includes the traditional ritual and combines that with a service called "Overcome" that recalls the history of slavery and celebrates triumphs in African-American history.
For instance, there were the traditional symbolic foods on the Seder plate: the roasted bone recalling Passover sacrifice; the green vegetable representing spring; the mixture of chopped apples, nuts and wine that symbolizes the bricks and mortar of slavery; the roasted egg that is a symbol of the festival offering in the Temple; and the bitter herbs recalling the bitterness of slavery.
African-American symbols
On the Overcome Table were symbols of African-American culture: rice for the resilience and ingenuity of ancestors during times of struggle; greens representing the land where African-Americans toiled for others; grits symbolic of the mortar used to build other people's buildings; and peanut soup representing the inventiveness of African-Americans such as George Washington Carver, who developed a multitude of peanut-based products.
The legacies of slavery and freedom were not the only things held in common last night. As they ate the bitter herbs -- parsley dipped in salt water -- there were grimaces on Jewish and African-American faces alike.
"It was a little salty," Curry said of the salty water that symbolized the tears shed during slavery and oppression. "At our table we were saying, 'That's a lot of tears for us to have shed. A lot of tears.' "
Pub Date: 3/29/99