Under the watchful view of Soviet surveillance equipment, an interfaith group of local clergy staged a “Freedom Seder” Tuesday outside the Soviet Consulate here. The seder included a fully set Passover table in the street directly in front of the Consulate gates.
“God hears the cries of Soviet Jews and we must also,” said the Rev. Emil Authelet, north coastal area minister of the American Baptist Churches of the West. “Yet His cry needs a human voice. We are to be that voice in today’s world.”
Authelet is one of the eight interfaith clerics who organized the Freedom Seder. The eight clerics led the Passover service in the reading of the specially written Freedom Seder haggadah–the telling of the exodus, which in this case drew parallels with the plight of Soviet Jews.
Eight Soviet Jewish Prisoners of Conscience were the focus of this year’s Freedom Seder, in large photographs set in a row down the center of the table.
Chairs around the table were left empty in a symbolic gesture for the Jews in the Soviet Union who cannot celebrate Passover. “We are doing it for them,” said Richard Barron and Ruben Haller, co-chairpersons of the demonstration and members of the Board of the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews.
Only 1,139 Soviet Jews were permitted to emigrate in 1985, down substantially from the peak year in Soviet Jewish emigration of 1979, when more than 51,000 Jews were allowed to leave. Last month, 47 Soviet Jews were allowed to emigrate.
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