Passover Seder Reordered For Ceasefire

Beautiful ceremony, reminding New Haven that this city is home to a vibrant anti-war Jewish community. The long history of Jewish opposition to the state of Israel and its violence cannot be erased.

@Goldenrod Huh? Yeah sure and that's how the State of Israel got established; with "the long history of the opposition of Jews." You may be (can't tell since you hide behind a pseudonym) one Jew (along with some fringe Hasidim who are waiting for the divine grant of return to the homeland) who feels that way, but don't invert the sentiment of most of the Jewish community regarding the existence of Israel ( including me) which is strongly in support.

Jewish Voice for Peace does not represent the Jewish people nor is it for peace. Case in point: you can buy their merch that includes t-shirts with the writing: “Israel is a garbage country that's only loved by garbage people”.
Oh and they like to hire terrorists to speak at their national conferences.

JVP is like a child living in an ahistorical fantasyland. JVP, my dear children, Israel IS. It is a democratic UN member state with over 9 million citizens 2 million of whom are Arab and a half million of which are Bahai and other minorities with full citizenship rights. To advocate Israel’s ceasing to exist is a call for genocide. JVP, please walk back such bloodthirsty nonsense. Instead, please become adults, live in the world, and work for the only viable option of two states for two peoples in our shared homeland with our Palestinian neighbors. Every other option means forever war. Your advocacy is so sad and violent beyond your own understanding.

@ Carl Goldfield. Actually, there has been robust opposition to Zionism within many Jewish communities. Zionism is a 19th century Jewish nationalist movement, and its leader Theodore Herzl was resoundingly rejected by most European rabbis at the time. In the orthodox Jewish world, opposition to Zionism was the dominant position for decades.

When Britain issued the Balfour Declaration declaring Palestine as the homeland of the Jews, the only Jew in the Cabinet opposed the Declaration, seeing its antisemitic aims to send Jews to Palestine rather than welcoming them and keeping them safe in Europe.

The Palestinian Jews who were living in Palestine before Zionist migration also opposed Zionism, joining their Muslim and Christian neighbors in writing statements, building organizations, and lobbying internationally against Zionist settlement.

In Eastern Europe, the General Jewish Labor Bund strongly rejected Zionism as a solution to antisemitism as it did little to combat anti-Jewish oppression, but simply re-segregated the Jews into an exclusivist nation-state that, by its very nature, could not be truly liberatory.

For the decades after the creation of the state of Israel, resistance to the ongoing Palestinian Nakba, and to Zionism, could still be found amongst the Israeli Jewish public through groups like the Israeli Black Panthers and organizations in the New Left movement.

To answer your question, the State of Israel was not established because the Jews of the world agreed on it. Israel was established by Great Britain and the UN, by groups of mostly non-Jews failed to address antisemitism in Europe and saw the Zionist movement as a convenient way to handle the Jewish problem without actually addressing antisemitism. This is a well-documented history, and has been documented by plenty of Israeli historians like Ilan Pappe.

Check out Our Palestine Question, the new book about the lineage of American Jewish dissent on Zionism.

Yes!! I love and cherish these Jewish voices, the community of Mending Minyan, that creatively channels and elevates Jewish values that are so fundamental for me: pursuing justice, loving our neighbor, welcoming the stranger, seeing everyone as created in the image of God. See you at Board of Alders tomorrow night!

One of the verses in Dayenu talks about living in the land of Israel.

The song itself was written well over a thousand years ago, and references the connections Jews have had to the land of Israel for thousands of years before that.

Jews have offered peace and a 2 state solution multiple times. They cannot force Palestinians to want to make peace with them.

@ Goldenrod "a convenient way to handle the Jewish problem without actually addressing antisemitism." Yep that's it. And Hitler was involved with handling the Jewish question. We are a problem without a state and we are a problem with one. I prefer to be a problem with one.

Israel has a right to exist as a country.
It is a recognized country by the UN and most of the world.
The Jewish people have a right to exist in peace.
The Palestinian people have a right to exist in peace.
If they are going to coexist peacefully in a two state solution, then they’re going to have to work with each other recognizing their equal rights to peace and mutual wellbeing and respect.
If the Palestinians want to eradicate Israel and the Jewish people, then they are wrong,
If the Israeli government and army want to eradicate Gaza and the Palestinian people, they are wrong.
Hamas stands for the eradication of Israel and the Jewish people. They are wrong.
The only path to peace is peaceful coexistence and a neutral third party enforcing the negotiated ceasefire and the future two state solution.
Hamas is not the way towards that goal.
Their actions have drastically reduced the possibility of achieving that goal in the next several generations.
Netanyahu and his administration are not the way to achieve that goal, either. They have chosen actions that are being examined as war crimes.
The path forward is to have Hamas surrender the hostages and the dead, lay down their arms, and allow free and fair elections to allow the people of Gaza to pick leaders who will work towards peace and prosperity and rebuilding of public good infrastructure and residences.
And Israel to release Palestinians from incarceration and to hold free and fair elections to allow Israelis to choose leaders who will work towards mutual peace and prosperity in a two state solution.
The current calls for the elimination or expulsion of Israel and the Jewish people and all phrases associated with a history of violence must end.
A lot of people seem to not know the history going back to the first origins of civilization in that land, and are being fed misinformation, disinformation, and manipulated and are asking for simple answers to a very complex situation.

From many of the actions happening on college campuses and the things being said in regards to this war, I see a lot of things that seemed to be people being manipulated and radicalized online on social media.
Instead of saying phrases and actions of protesting violence and the war and suffering, they seem to be getting more violent in words, phrases, intentions and actions.
I’m worried that enemy states and bots and AI and algorithms are purposefully or unintentionally creating the circumstances of much of the unrest taking a violent and anti Jewish and anti Israel, as well as anti Muslim and anti Arabic tone.
We have to be careful that we only seek out reputable and verified sources of information, and question the info being funneled to us with the intent to cause a civil war in our own country, or a global war using Israel and Gaza as a tool to divide us and make us disregard our common humanity.
Work only towards peace and common humanity and do not adopt stances or phrases that assure us mutual destruction and dehumanizing others.

Thankful for adults modeling true non violent activism/protest/gathering/communing.