Theogene Rudasingwa has dined with kings and queens, but on April 14 he broke matzah with 110 people at a freedom seder in San Rafael.
The former Rwandan ambassador to the United States, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico also spoke from the heart as he shared the profound words of his then-5-year-old daughter in 2005.
“If you have love in your heart, if you have forgiveness in your heart, if you have freedom in your heart,” Rudasingwa said, “then you have life.”
Rudasingwa, who later became secretary general of the movement that helped end the slaughter in Rwanda, was among an impressive array of speakers at the Multicultural Freedom Seder at the Osher Marin JCC.
Putting the emphasis on the “freedom” aspect of Passover (the Festival of Freedom), the event was sponsored by the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council, the Marin Interfaith Council and several synagogues.
The seder included readings, traditional liturgy, music, poetry, and candid narratives from formerly or currently oppressed people.
Suzan Berns, North Bay regional coordinator of the JCRC, invited representatives from many of Marin’s ethnic communities, ensuring the event would reflect the diversity of Marin County.
Included was Mohammed Suleiman from Darfur, and his son, Amgad, born in the United States.
“The cry for freedom and forgiveness is a cry for love,” said Rudasingwa, now vice president for global affairs at Pangaea Global Aids Foundation in San Francisco. “Please, please, please listen to the children. They are our future.”
At the seder, children chanted the Four Questions and read portions from a freedom haggadah. The tome was filled with quotes from Martin Luther King Jr., the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Burmese activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
The seder was co-led by Rabbi Lee Bycel, the S.F.-based Western regional director of American Jewish World Service, and the Rev. Carol Hovis, executive director of the Marin Interfaith Council.
Bycel asked attendees to “think of all the people who represent liberation to you and bring them into your seder.”
Hovis said the Multicultural Freedom Seder was a call to action. “We are aware when enslavement happens in Marin,” she said, alluding to past and current immigration raids that many in the Jewish community condemned and protested, “and how we must practice regularly what we are doing tonight.”
Two members of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria briefly shared their hopes for peace. One of them, Joanne Campbell, offered a prayer in Coastal Miwok, a language no longer learned and rarely used, she said.
When it came time to break the afikomen, Bycel reminisced about a seder in which a woman from Darfur offered her take on the splitting of the dessert matzah.
“She said the larger half is broken
and put away because Jews are a
hopeful people, hoping for an end to oppression,” Bycel said.
Another guest at the seder, Douan Pham, witnessed oppression and cruelty in her village in Vietnam when she was only 5. Even though she escaped from communist rule, she saw villagers being tortured and murdered in the town square.
“Because my father was a landowner, he was a wanted man,” said Pham. “There was no freedom of speech, no human rights.”
She added, “We couldn’t make our own songs or create poems from our hearts” as people were doing at the seder.
The meal was served by a group of formerly homeless and struggling young adults from New Beginnings Center in Novato, all graduates of the organization’s Fresh Start Culinary Academy.
Right before that occurred, a high school student and a college sophomore — each active in One Dream 2009, an organization devoted to giving humanity to undocumented immigrants — spoke about giving voice to the voiceless.
San Rafael High School junior Betsy Bueno and College of Marin student Lupe Romo spoke about One Dream’s effort to gather 15 million signatures in recognition of the number of undocumented workers in this country.
After the vegetarian feast, the seder ended with a spontaneous circle of dancing to “We Shall Overcome” and “Shalom Haverim.” Guests filled empty cups of Elijah at their tables and said that until the Messiah comes, redemption is up to everyone.
“Tonight is a meaningful night for me,” Pham said. “It’s better than Christmas.”