c. 1997 Religion News Service

SILVER SPRING, Md. _ The tables were carefully set with fancy dishes, baskets of matzoh, sweet kosher wine, water for hand-washing, leafy greens and salt water for dipping the greens. A Passover Seder book, or Haggadah, sat at each place. An ornate Seder plate, decorated with Hebrew lettering and traditional Passover symbols, adorned the head table.

But there was one unusual thing about this traditional Passover meal _ all of the 88 attendees were Christians.

Jennifer and Amy Farrar came with their parents to the Seder at Saint Luke Lutheran Church in Silver Spring, Md., to learn more about the Jewish roots of their Christian faith.”It’s like, this has something to do with me!”said 13-year-old Amy.

Passover is one of the pivotal celebrations of the Jewish calendar. The holiday commemorates the mass Exodus of the Jews from slavery under Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II and is celebrated by sharing a ritual meal _”seder”is the Hebrew word for order _ replete with symbolic foods, songs and prayers.

But for Christians, Passover can take on a special meaning. According to all four Gospels, Jesus made the customary holiday pilgrimage to Jerusalem and ate a Passover meal for his Last Supper, after which he was arrested, tried, crucified and, according to Christian belief, resurrected on Easter Sunday.

Because of this, Christians from virtually every denomination have held Passover events during the past 50 years, with the number rising after the interfaith fervor of the 1960s. Usually, however, Christian celebrations of the Passover meal were combined with the Last Supper liturgy _ through which Jesus introduced the Eucharist to his disciples _ and compromised the integrity of both traditions.”My belief is, let each religion stand on its own and don’t try to read into it your own beliefs,”said Rabbi A. James Rudin, director of interfaith affairs for the American Jewish Committee and a columnist for Religion News Service.

So a growing number of churches across the country have launched efforts to enrich their Christian faith by experiencing an authentic Jewish Passover celebration. Rewards from such endeavors range from simple education to interfaith dialogue and racial reconciliation. Members of Saint Luke Lutheran Church have enjoyed the experience for five years.

Although the Seder was led by the Rev. Waldron Rosheim, the Haggadah was written by Barbara Balzac Thompson, a convert to Lutheranism who was raised in a Conservative Jewish home.

Thompson introduced her Haggadah, called”Passover Seder: Ritual and Menu for an Observance by Christians,”by saying,”Christians will want to avoid any tendency to syncretism, that is, mixing the Seder and the Lord’s Supper so that the Seder appears to be a Christian observance. It is a Jewish ritual used to observe the Passover.” Rosheim led the Seder on March 27, Maundy Thursday. After the meal, the congregation moved to their worship hall to hear the Last Supper liturgy, which Rosheim called”a continuation of God’s revelation to us.” Leaders of other Christian denominations agree with Rosheim’s approach.”One needs to respect the integrity of the Seder,”said Eugene Fisher, an interreligious affairs official at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The Rev. Paul Lee, director of ecumenical and interreligious affairs at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, agreed.”That’s the best way to dialogue, instead of being satisfied with the lowest common denominator,”he said.

To this end, the Archdiocese of Chicago, in conjunction with the Anti-Defamation League, published”The Passover Celebration,”written by Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of the ADL’s department of interfaith affairs. The book has sold more than 350,000 copies and is in its 23rd edition.

Klenicki said the booklet is used across the country. In Flushing, N.Y., he said, a religiously and ethnically diverse group of 325 people will gather this year.”It’s a very special moment because they know about it (Passover) from the New Testament story,”he said.

Interfaith dialogue is not the only product of Christians observing an authentic Passover Seder. African-American Christians are getting increasingly involved, viewing Passover as a time to focus on a shared heritage of liberation and redemption from slavery.

Washington Hebrew Congregation, a prominent Reform synagogue in the nation’s capital, has hosted a Seder for 12 years, inviting members of at least seven predominantly black churches, including Shiloh Baptist Church.

The synagogue’s Rabbi Joseph P. Weinberg believes the Seder emphasizes”the universal dimensions of the experience _ the journey from bondage to freedom.” David C. Friedman, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Washington office, agrees that Seders such as Washington Hebrew’s and the Anti-Defamation League’s own annual Seder with black churches provide”a wonderful counterbalance … to bad relations, prevailing attitudes”that plague black-Jewish dialogue.

But some African-American church leaders are skeptical that any lasting good comes from sitting down together once a year.”We’re together one night and then we go to our separate worlds,”said the Rev. Grayland Ellis-Hagler, senior pastor of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington.

Karen Kalish, who heads Operation Understanding, a Washington black-Jewish dialogue group, agreed that sometimes the positive effects of interfaith Seders are not lasting.”Could they be? Yes. Are they? No,”she said.

But Kalish added that valuable learning takes place more often than not. She recalled one Seder where a Jew asked,”How did they know our song?”when African-Americans sang”Let My People Go,”an old spiritual dating back to American slavery.

Also, Kalish said,”Many in the black community are not aware that Jews were ever slaves.” Some scholars applaud the efforts by Christians to learn more about the Jewish Passover ritual.

John Dominic Crossan, a professor of religious studies at DePaul University in Chicago and an expert in the events of Jesus’ last days, said,”These are Jewish texts. We have to face that.”The two rituals (Easter and Passover) meet together as a challenge for the same God,”said Crossan, arguing the God of Judaism and Christianity is”a very special type of God, one who prefers doomed slaves to imperial masters.” This theology of justice is helpful in interfaith and interracial dialogue and reconciliation, said Crossan, especially because the Passover ritual involves food.”Food is about justice,”he said,”because food is about bodies.”

MJP END LEBOWITZ