It wasn’t until I typed that title into my computer that I realized how the two things I wanted to write about are connected in a very deep way. During the run-up to Passover which begins on Saturday evening, April 12th, it’s hard for me to focus on anything beyond the list that is constantly scrolling in my head of the tasks that remain to prepare for the dramatic transformation that our apartment – especially our kitchen – must undergo before the start of the 8-day holiday. Although we’ve already shopped for the core items like matzo, gefilte fish and borscht, there’s still more shopping ahead closer to the date for the chicken, carrots and parsnips that go into my inimitable chicken soup. More daunting are the cleaning jobs that will enable us to declare our house free of any leavened items, primarily bread and related baked goods. This also requires hauling up from the basement and from our otherwise dormant pantry shelves an entire separate set of dishes, silverware, pots and pans which are pressed into service for just these 8 days before they are retired again till next year.
There’s an element of madness to this process, which can only be justified by the lame justification that “this is the way I grew up, and I’m not intending to change it.” It’s exhausting, but when our guests gather around the seder table and when we move through the remaining days of the Passover holidays, there’s an uplifting sense of renewal, a feeling of being temporarily raised out of the dailiness of the rest of our lives. I imagine that our Muslim friends must feel something similar during the month of Ramadan.
The logistics of making all this happens often obscures the meaning of the holiday – our obligation as Jews to tell the story of our liberation from slavery, our exodus from Egypt and the subsequent wandering before we finally reach our homeland. And it’s here that I make a leap of association that readers of my blog should be accustomed to by now. You’ll have to bear with me for a bit while I set the table that will enable you to see the connection between the two words in my title.
Shortly after the inauguration of this second Trump nightmare administration, I proposed that to avoid being overwhelmed by the number of fronts Trump has created that call for resistance, we should choose one as our focus and invest our energy in it. Rosellen and I chose immigration since ICE head Thomas Homan had declared that Chicago was going to be Ground Zero for their deportation efforts. Making good on that resolution wasn’t as easy as we had hoped.
Our first step, which I’ve written about elsewhere, was attending a rally and training session spearheaded by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) where we learned about the work of rapid response teams and about how to protect sanctuary spaces like churches, schools and hospitals from incursions by ICE. We were proud to add our bodies to this large and inspiring gathering, but no sustained ongoing activity followed, partly because we live in part of town removed from the centers of Hispanice population and partly because ICIRR and similar groups had been so effective in their education efforts that most of ICE’s attempts at arrests in Chicago have been thwarted.
What followed was a period where we offered nothing more than moral and financial support for the anti-deportation efforts in the city, but just about a week ago an unexpected opening emerged. A friend told us about a project for which she was volunteering. It was based in a local church, which also happens to host the community gardenthat has become our virtual summer home. The group – it has a name, which I don’t even know – assists immigrants in completing the forms that need to be filed as part of a request for asylum or for work permits for those who have been in the country for the required length of time – 15 months, I believe. We contacted the coordinator of volunteers, who is herself a volunteer, and were almost immediately put to work.
Although I visited the church and observed the immigrant families being interviewed and assisted, our non-existent Spanish limits our roles in that part of the process. What Rosellen and I are doing, mostly remotely, is reviewing the almost final applications for completeness and accuracy. For example, are all dates listed in the proper format- mm/dd/year. It’s nitpicky, but just the reason an unsympathetic judge could use for rejecting an application. Are all the previous residences listed in the proper order? Is the information on each child complete?
But it’s the narrative portions of the application that brings me back to the Passover connection. All the applicants whose applications we read are Venezuelan. So many of them have been forced to leave because they have essentially been enslaved by gangs or by the ruling party. Some have witnessed members of their family murdered for failing to comply with the demands of the gangs or the government. Many of them have arrived here after unbelievable ordeals that have taken them through 7 or 8 countries, including Panama’s infamous Darien gap or after extended stays in other South American countries where their statelessness made them vulnerable to discrimination and exploitation. For them America is the promised land, and in the end most of them will not be granted asylum and will be cast out back into situations that are life threatening.
When we finally sit down at the seder table, I’m going to be thinking about all the valiant people I’ve met only through their stories. It’s going to make for a very crowded dining room because I’m also going to invite, metaphorically, all the dedicated volunteers who are helping give them a shot at joining us permanently, even though we’re not feeling or looking much like a promised land these days.
