Our 2024 Liberation Seder Haggadah

We have published the Haggadah we will be using for the 2024 BSST/JVL/JJP Liberation Seder on Thursday 25 April.

There is still time to register.

We hope you will join us but even if you cannot please consider making a donation to support the important work of the British Shalom Salaam Trust

From the introduction to our Seder service

Over centuries Jews have continually repurposed the original story of resistance against Egypt to show opposition to contemporary oppressions. As a festival of freedom, Pesach has provided radical Jews, practising and secular, with a focus: hope for the liberation of all who are unfree.

Tonight, we make special connections with the struggle for Palestinian freedom and equality, and especially with the memory of tens of thousands of Palestinians whose lives and hopes have been obliterated by IDF action in the last six months.

“The Seder” by Lynne Feldman, painter and fabric artist

At the same time, we hold in our hearts nearly twelve hundred Jews, Bedouin, overseas workers and foreign visitors murdered by Hamas and other groups on October 7th, the ongoing tragedy of the Israeli and Bedouin hostages, and the injustice experienced by thousands of Palestinians kept in Israeli jails after sham trials or no trial at all.

This is a seder like no other in our lifetime. An ancient rabbinic text instructs us that ‘Each person in every generation must regard himself or herself as having been personally freed from Egypt.’ We take from these words that each of us must connect this story to all current freedom struggles.

Tonight is the first seder we have organised during a horrific revenge war: most of all on the people of Gaza, but also on Palestinians in the West Bank, and on citizens of Israel who protest Israel’s war.

Inevitably, this seder has come with many uncertainties – about what to include and who – and we have worked up to the wire to be ready for you, as we promise we now are!

Chag sameach pesach