SHALOM SEDER [HAGADAH]

Waskow, Arthur

Published by Philadelphia, Menorah/Public Resource Enter [sic, Center?], 1983

Presume 1st edition thus, Original Green illustrated paper wrappers, 8vo, 22 pages. "Prepared for the Riverside Church…New York" No copies in OCLC-Worldcat, and we could find no copies anywhere using a google search. Almost certainly a variant of Waskow s "The Shalom Seder :towards a Passover of Pace" (Published by the author, NY, 1976), which itself has only one holding on OCLC (Harvard, OCLC: 825173050). It is unclear specifically why the Riverside Church was using this peace and justice Hagadah in 1983, though Riverside Church s role in peace and justice struggles in the preceding decades is certainly related. For example, " Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence , also referred as the Riverside Church speech, is an anti Vietnam War and pro social justice speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated….Some, like civil rights leader Ralph Bunche, the NAACP, and the editorial page writers of The Washington Post and The New York Times called the Riverside Church speech a mistake on King's part. The New York Times editorial suggested that conflating the civil rights movement with the Anti-war movement was an oversimplification that did justice to neither, stating that linking these hard, complex problems will lead not to solutions but to deeper confusion. Others, including James Bevel, King's partner and strategist in the Civil Rights Movement, called it King's most important speech" (Wikipedia). The Center for Jewish History in New York includes in it's Arthur Waskow papers a file titled, "Shalom Seder, 1981-1983," which it describes as "materials pertaining to Arthur Waskow s efforts to publish his work, his correspondence with publishers, agreements, copyright information, and other legal documents." Presumably this Copy-machine-produced edition was part of the process over several years of trial and error and the effort to find a commercial-quality publisher for the work. His organization, New Jewish Agenda, published the next year what is clearly a related work, "THE SHALOM SEDERS: THREE HAGGADAHS," (New York, 1984) to which he wrote the introduction. The work includes three hagadahs: The Rainbow Seder; The Seder of the Children of Abraham: and A Haggadah of Liberation. Indeed, Waskow's famous Freedom Seder, first published in 1969 for the Passover falling on the first anniversary of the assasination of Martin Luther King, jr., wove together the traditional text with passages from leaders of social justice movements, such as Martin Luther King. Arthur Ocean Waskow (born Arthur I. Waskow; 1933) "is an American author, political activist, and rabbi associated with the Jewish Renewal movement. Waskow was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He received a bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1954 and a Ph.D. in American history from University of Wisconsin Madison. He worked from 1959 to 1961 as legislative assistant to Congressman Robert Kastenmeier of Wisconsin. He was a senior fellow at the Peace Research Institute from 1961 through 1963. He joined Richard Barnet and Marcus Raskin and helped to found the Institute for Policy Studies in 1963, and he served as resident fellow until 1977. In 1968 Waskow was elected an alternate delegate from the District of Columbia to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. His delegation was pledged to support Robert F. Kennedy, and after Kennedy's assassination, Waskow proposed and the delegation agreed to nominate Reverend Channing Phillips, chair of the delegation, for President, the first Black American to be nominated at a major party convention. Waskow was a contributing editor to Ramparts magazine, which published his Freedom Seder in 1969. The Freedom Seder was the first widely published Passover Haggadah that intertwined the archetypal liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Ancient Egypt with more modern liberation struggles such as the Civil Rights Movement and the women's movement. Through the 196. Seller Inventory # 42785

Bibliographic Details

Title: SHALOM SEDER [HAGADAH]
Publisher: Philadelphia, Menorah/Public Resource Enter [sic, Center?]
Publication Date: 1983
Edition: 1st Edition