Oxford Chabad Society hosted a record number of people in vacation period, close to a hundred people, for the first Seder night of Passover and over forty people for the second Seder night at the David Slager Jewish student centre in Oxford.
The Seder was led by Rabbi Eli and Freidy Brackman who began the evening explaining that the Seder night is about reliving the Exodus from Egypt and the renewal of the Jewish people as a whole. At the same time, the Exodus is also about individual freedom which despite the freedoms that are a given in the West, is a constant struggle on the personal level.
Freedom is subjective. For a fish to live out of water or a tree not to be able to grow naturally is oppression. The highest level of freedom is one that allows for the pursuit of wisdom to the highest degree of intellect. As a human being needs freedom unique for a human being - the pursuit of wisdom – similarly a Jewish person needs the pursuit and expression of their Jewishness to celebrate corresponding spiritual freedom.
This is the aspiration of freedom that is needed to be developed on Passover - the anniversary of the Exodus from Egypt and the birth of the Jewish people.
A participant at the Seder commented afterwards:
“…I wanted to comment on something you said on Tuesday. You mentioned that living in the West (Europe, USA), we take freedom for granted, and in particular the freedom of religion, freedom to be Jewish.
Only a day before I was talking about this to a friend.
Reading the list of victims of the Moscow bombing, I noticed that most of them were younger than me. I then thought that I am actually quite old, as I remember Pesach in the still-soviet times. When I first stared going to celebrate Pesach by the only synagogue in Moscow, once the service was over, the crowd was being dispersed by police.
For school children it was particularly important not to get caught, since they could detain you and notify your school. The school would then have to publically humiliate you for participating in “cult gatherings”.
One year, with a couple of other school-aged participants, we had to sneak out in the dark through the back of the children’s playground on the other side of the street, and then came out behind the police line.
Of course, these little antics were only a very pale reflection of the true risks that our parents would have to take in similar circumstances.
However, the situation itself is so inconceivable in our times, that it really brings home the point you made, that we so easily take good things for granted.”
Another partcipant commented:
"Very many thanks for the Seder on Tuesday night. My friend who came with me sent a note to say how he especially appreciated the whole atmosphere.
I felt that you struck an excellent balance between explanation and child-friendly timing and the explanations themselves were very interesting and many of them new to me."