It's that fucking time of year again.

[attackfish]

There are billboards up everywhere advertizing a Christian Seder being held at the Von Braun Center.  Yes, let's just appropriate Jewish religion and culture and the act out the deeply sacred traditions of a religious group that has faced thousands of years of persecution at the hands of Christians, and let's do it in a building named after a Nazi!  I think profanity is an entirely appropriate response, no?

Comments

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

I'm with you. It's offensive. It's evil. It's wrong. If they don't understand that Jews were murdered en masse for blood libels on this holiday, they don't get it.

I am working with a pastor who wants to do it appropriately with appropriating and we're designing a poverty seder, where they learn about Jewish traditions in a fun lecture, and then raise money for a social justice cause, such as human trafficking, poverty relief and the dignity of every person. There will be some readings from the Hagaddah but the idea of it is using it as a gathering to represent the spirit of the holiday in a universal sense.

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

The Christians who do things like this don't understand the difference between appropriating a culture not their own, and engaging with it on an equal footing. Pastors like the one you're working with are sadly few and far between in the world of Christians who want a Christian Seder. And holding it in a building named after a man who gleefully used Jewish slave labor, and hand picked his slaves from Buchenwald is frankly enough to turn my stomach.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

I know, and it breaks my heart. That's why the pastor and I want to actually publish a "how to" guide, free (with a donate box to a charity, we're considering human trafficking or poverty relief ones) on our seder plans, with the liturgy an abbreviated Hagaddah service, with more readings from Christian philosophers like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, and Walter Rauschenbusch, discussion of the Sermon of the Mount and an examination of the values of the seder through history.

That way, Jews can just send it to churches and say "We've shown you how to do it inoffensively."

[attackfish.livejournal.com]

That way, Jews can just send it to churches and say "We've shown you how to do it inoffensively."

You now have no excuse?