Rabbi Yehuda Ceitlin, Outreach Director of Chabad Tucson, said the annual Chabad Passover Community Seder on Monday night will be a “politics free meal.”
Ceitlin and senior Rabbi Yossie Shemtov were expecting over 100 people at Chabad Tucson to celebrate Passover, an eight-day festival which begins from sundown on Monday, April 10 until after nightfall on Tuesday, April 18, 2017.
Passover commemorates the exodus of the Jews from Egypt and will be celebrated with festive “Seder” dinners on April 10 and 11, 2017.
“Politics and divisiveness have plagued our public discourse,” Ceitlin told Maria Hechanova, reporter for Fox 11 and KOLD 13 news stations. “We have seen friends grow apart because of differences along partisan lines.”
An op-ed in the New York Times called to “Keep Your Politics Out of Passover,” after some groups created an agenda-driven Haggadah reading for the Passover meal.
“The story of the Jewish people being freed from slavery in ancient Egypt is a enough of a timeless message for us today,” Ceitlin said.
“An oppressed people, their yearning for freedom, the power of faith and the acceptance of a moral calling are relevant to us today as they were back then.”
Instead, Ceitlin suggests viewing the Seder as a framework for achieving personal freedom. He authored this week an article titled “Passover’s 4 Steps to Breaking Bad Habits.”
“The Seder can lead us on a personal journey towards freedom from any negative practises that hold us back,” he says. “Why confine it to politics?”
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