“Ma Nishtana? What has changed? Since last Pesach everything has changed. I lived between a river and a forest, and went to work on foot. I lived in a small house, now in a tall building. In the past I spoke Amharic, now I speak Hebrew,” Ethiopian immigrant Sissai Vandya reads aloud.
“Ma Nishtana? Seder in America. I read the Haggadah. My brother and his Cristian fiancee invite my cousin and his Christian wife to see what a Jewish Pesach celebration is. Seder in America,” reads Grace Sapol, from the United States.
“Ma Nishtana? That on all other nights in cold and rainy Moscow we celebrated the seder clandestinely, fearful of the gentiles. One of the neighbors might tell on us, and then the KGB will find ways to get rid of us. Here we celebrate the seder in the spring. It’s warm, windows are open and no one is afraid that our Jewish singing will be heard,” reads Vladimir Danovsky, an emigre from the former Soviet Union.
Here at the Millman Absorption Center in Tel Aviv, the Jewish Agency for Israel is holding its first model seder as part of its young leadership course for olim, or new immigrants.
About 100 young women and men have come from as far as Nahariya and Carmiel in the north, from Beersheba and Dimona in the south and from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Alei Zameret, translated as Leaves at the Treetop, the Jewish Agency’s leadership course is aimed at university graduates younger than 36 who have been Israel for some time.
The free, eight-month course is held in Jerusalem, Haifa, Beersheba and Tel Aviv, and includes weekly evening meetings, weekend seminars and tours.
The seminars touch on such diverse issues as the political, economical, cultural and social structure of Israel, the peace process and community relations.
The curriculum, aimed at helping olim enter the mainstream of Israeli life, does not shy away from controversial topics such as the Law of Return; who is a Jew; and relations between new olim and old- timers, between Orthodox and secular Jews and between Jews and Arabs.
Lecturers include prominent academics, politicians, rabbis and community leaders.
“Almost all aliyah stems from distress — economic, political or existential – – rather than from ideology,” Motti Friedman, Alei Zameret’s director, said.
“If we can prove to the olim that they can build a home, and find quality of life here, we have succeeded. The course does not provide clear-cut, easy answers, but rather the dialectics of our reality.”
The program is in its fourth year. The decision to include a model seder this year came at the suggestion of Sapol, a 26-year-old from King of Prussia, Pa., who made aliyah two years ago.
“One of the things we learn here is how to put a community project together,” said Sapol, who works as an assistant to General Motors Corp’s representative in Israel but is considering working at the Jewish Agency.
“So I decided to organize a project for ourselves, a seder in which we all tell about our personal exodus from Egypt, Russia, Ethiopia,” she said, speaking fluent Hebrew.
Although the predominant language tonight is Hebrew, the four questions are asked, to everyone’s delight, in Russian, English, Ukrainian, Mongolian, French and Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia.
Most of the participants speak a heavily accented Hebrew, but they use it freely, without the inhibition or timidity that is common to most olim.
On the stage, three participants accompany the singing with an organ, piano and violin. On one wall hang the paintings of Irena Maksimova, a participant in the program.
Friedman conducts the seder, and a few join in with the singing, while others seize the opportunity to chat.
Utter silence falls, though, as the participants give personal accounts of life before and after aliyah.
“In Ethiopia, all the Jews must come to the kes’ house for the seder, no matter how far they live,” says Moshe Ba’ata, referring to the community’s spiritual leader.
“The kes slaughters the Pesach sacrifice, and after his and the elders’ blessings, everyone receives a little matzah and meat. During the holiday no one works, and you only eat matzah and drink water.”
“We couldn’t get matzah in our region,” says Anna Sokol, an emigre from Ukraine. “We had to ask family members in Moscow to send us five kilos of `food,’ which is what we called matzah from fear of KGB eavesdropping.”
At their table, Eugenia Robinov and Ora Shapira exchange Matzah tales from Russia.
It was always the old people who knew first of the arrival of matzah in town, they say. Shapira remembers the taste of the special Easter bread and matzah sandwiches she used to make. Robinov recalls that at her home, the matzah was always kept hidden.
As they approach the end of model seder, Leonid Guzman from the former Soviet Union reads aloud: “The new oleh from Diasporaland runs happily in the streets, yelling: `I left Egypt. I left Egypt.’ But nobody reacts, because they speak Hebrew. The first Maka (punishment).” Everyone laughs.
“And many more punishments await the new oleh from Diasporaland until he will leave Egypt: unemployment, mortgage, stigma and stereotypes,” he reads.
“Still, we shall not despair! In the end we shall all leave Egypt.”
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