A group of students at a seder table is invited to read a portion from the Haggadah.
“Behold this bread, bread of affliction,” they recite. “Wanderers’ bread, baked in the wilderness.”
Why is this seder different from other seders? Because, here, the students are from Catholic high schools, where they are more accustomed to Eucharist wafers than to matzah.
The eight Haggadah readers were part of a larger group invited to San Francisco’s Congregation Sherith Israel last week from Mercy High School in Burlingame, St. Ignatius High School in San Francisco and Woodside Priory High School in Portola Valley. They were there under the auspices of the Catholic/Jewish Educational Enrichment Program (C-JEEP).
Set up three years ago, C-JEEP has as its mission the strengthening of mutual understanding between Catholics and Jews. Co-sponsored by the American Jewish Committee and the archdioceses of San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, the program operates as a respectful exchange between Jewish and Catholic educators.
Under the leadership of Rabbi Robert Daum of Sonoma’s Congregation Shir Shalom, the 100 or so students at last week’s event participated in a lively and educational seder.
“Food is in many ways at the heart of Jewish culture,” Daum told the audience, “and the food in the Passover seder is symbolic. So essentially, by eating the food we are learning certain lessons.”
“It’s a totally new experience,” said Mike Walsh, a senior from St. Ignatius . “I’ve never had the opportunity to come to a synagogue or be part of a Jewish service.”
As Daum performed the urchatz, or symbolic hand-washing that comes after kiddush, he encouraged the participants to draw connections between religions.
“Ritual washing of hands or feet happens in Judaism, Christianity and Islam,” he said. “They’re all tied to the notion of water as a purifying substance. And of course,” he added, “it’s hygienic too.”
Later, Elizabeth Mizrahi of the American Jewish Commitee described her family’s tradition of hiding the afikomen, remembering the fun she and her cousins had when searching for it.
“Do families without children still hide an afikomen?” wondered Christopher Gee, a senior from St. Ignatius.
“Yes, they’ll still do it,” said Daum. “The seder can’t conclude until the afikomen is found.”
Adding a musical element to the program, songleader Joanna Selznick performed a version of the Four Questions and later led the audience in a rousing rendition of “Dam Dam (The Plague Song).”
“I think the message is about the release from slavery, and the fact that slavery still exists today,” said Bernadette Austin, a senior from Woodside Priory.
“I like the horseradish quite a lot,” she added. “Is that weird?”
Meanwhile, Mercy High School students wanted to know if they could take some matzah home with them.
Teachers Sandy Flaherty and Angie Simonetti from Mercy praised the “kid-friendly” nature of the service. They also felt it offered a valuable experience in cross-cultural learning.
“We teach our freshmen about Hebrew scriptures, and we talked last year about Moses and the Exodus. But here, they get the reality of the stories,” said Flaherty.
“Our religions are similar, and yet they’re different,” said Patty Wellman, a senior from St. Ignatius. “It was nice of them to invite us. It’s so interesting to see how another religion works.”
“Oh,” she added, “and the food is really great.”