The Freedom Haggadah For A Liberatory Passover

Ira Manhoff was born and raised in Westbury, NY on Long Island. Both my parents had orthodox Jewish grandparents but were raised in fairly secular households. At one point they actually joined Christian Science due to the very severe health issues my brother suffered with. That did bring them some comfort but my mother admitted that superstition is what kept her on that path and years later when I was born they returned to reform Judaism.

Growing up I was very much into my Jewish identity, more on a cultural level than a religious one but I did have a bar mitzvah and was the one who made sure we celebrated Jewish holidays in our home. I insisted we hold a Passover seder, celebrate the High Holidays and Hanukkah each year in the Reform tradition. I also started reading about Jewish history and as I learned about the Holocaust I tried to understand how such a thing could happen. This combined with some of the antisemitism I experienced as a child (being beaten up by a neighborhood bully as he called me a “Christ Killer”) led me to seek out pro-Jewish activism.

As a teenager I attended rallies for Soviet Jewry and ended up joining the Jewish Defense League where I learned karate and other forms of self defense. At 14 I was invited to spend the summer with my sister and her husband in Brussels where they were living and when I was told they were going for a weeks vacation in Yugoslavia I contacted a NYC organization that loaded me up with Jewish religious items that I smuggled into the country.

Soon after that I joined Betar which is a right wing Zionist youth movement. At first I looked at Zionism as a true movement for Jewish liberation but after two trips to Israel I could no longer deny what I saw with my own eyes. The oppression of Palestinians was not something I could live with and I parted ways with what at one time had given me so much hope for a Jewish future. At that time I did not know about the long proud history of anti-Zionism in Jewish history but finally learning about it helped me realize I could still be a proud Jew without being a Zionist.

I look forward to the opportunity of sharing with the Southern Tier Interfaith Coalition a way to celebrate Passover that is not contaminated by ideologies that distort what it really means to be a Jew. I have always been an activist, be it during the AIDS crisis with ACTUP NY, in my union demanding health coverage for same sex couples , helping defend womens health clinics from anti choice protests and fighting attempts to label anti-Zionism as antisemitism. I have never felt more Jewish as I stand with Palestinians in their fight for justice.