Friday, April 18, 2008

Looking for Convivencia: Tibet

Passover: a retelling of the journey from slavery to freedom; the leaving of our internal Egypt, the narrow place of our fears, our narrow ways of thinking, - and moving forward into unchartered territory. Jews everywhere are in a frenzy of cleaning, shopping, and cooking, getting ready for the seder. This family home ritual conducted as part of the Passover observance starts tomorrow night.

Arthur Waskow's Shalom Center sent out the following:
"This year, Roger Kamenitz, who wrote The Jew in the Lotus, and developed the Seders for Tibet, (a 'grandchild' of Arthur Waskow's original Freedom Seder) writes

Suggestions for Tibetan additions to seder:

Symbol: an empty picture frame placed beside the seder plate.
When we tell the story of our own slavery in Egypt we pause to
consider the current oppression in Tibet:

Tibetans are forbidden to have photos of the Dalai Lama in Tibet.
The Chinese government confiscates them. The Tibetans took to hanging empty picture frames. The Chinese police confiscated them as well..."

We embrace this addition to this year's seder. Looking for Convivencia does not only apply to Spain!

1 comment:

Maggy Whitehouse said...

Hi Susan, very much enjoyed your pieces about Cordoba and Toledo. I'm just building a website called La-Convivencia which is how I found this.
My husband and I felt 'married from above' when we visited the synagogue in Cordoba. We were just dating until then but it was quite apparent that it was suddenly a lot more than that!
Best wishes, Maggy