The table of life

"Out of the chaos the future emerges in harmony and beauty."--Emma Goldman

Bopping our table mates with limp scallions while singing Dayeinu wasn't the only highlight of the Seder last Monday. It might have been the "sacrificial Yam," offered in deference to the many vegetarians crowding the makeshift dining hall in this 1920s Berkeley bungalow. Or the elevation of Miriam (the dancing girl that usually only merits a footnote), to her revered place as prophetess and conjurer of mysterious wells in the desert--who refreshed lagging spirits during years and years of dusty wandering.

Nearly half the 50 guests weren't Jewish, many were attending their first Seder, yet somehow all made to feel like family. The hostess, Candace reminds us that we are all on a perpetual journey of liberation with the earth's peoples. We move backwards and forwards through history as the songs of the Tunisian protestors, the 1911 shirtwaist factory protest, as well as the struggles of civilians in Gaza are remarked on by Judy, the officiant.

Karpas, maror, matzah-- Foods tell stories, as we work our way through bitter herbs soaked in tears to the apple and nut relish standing in for mortar used for rebuilding--we take the myth of hardship, flight and freedom into our bodies, into our own histories.

But mostly it was a love fest of self-described"over-the-hill anarchists," filmmakers, politicians, academics, midwives and prison wardens--celebrating the battles for truth and freedom they had joined in over the years. Recounting struggles, up to their necks in water on the way to the land of milk and honey.

And that was the sweetest moment of all, over macaroons and strawberries, seeing that after a lifetime of struggle, hope for liberation for all was still alive among the old lefties, in the old house in Berkeley. My husband and I drifted out feeling like it had been a reunion with people we'd never even met. With echoes of the Buddhist precepts that no one is free from suffering until everyone is, the refrain of tonight's haggadah followed us out the door and into the full moon's shadow.

"So that the next sea-opening is not also a drowning; so that our singing is never again their wailing. So that our freedom leaves no one orphaned, childless, or gasping for air."