“As a precaution for potentially miscalculating the true first night of Passover, it is traditional to hold a seder two nights in a row when outside the land of Israel.

I celebrated the Passover Seder three times this year.

This semester, I participated in a Jewish and Muslim discussion group: one of many campus initiatives fostering student dialogue about the current war in Gaza. We initially planned to attend both a communal iftar and a seder together, but were not all on campus on the first or second night of Passover, when sedarim are traditionally held. No problem. With 40-plus Passover Sedarim under my belt, I offered to host one myself. We decided to meet on Sunday night before the holiday officially began.

The night before our seder convened, I stayed up until 4 a.m. watching footage of the protests at Columbia University. I felt numb seeing many nonviolent protesters (many of whom were Jewish) get hauled away by the police and felt terror watching videos of explicitly antisemitic threats and slurs being chanted and specifically directed at Jewish students, many of whom I knew personally. I felt conflicted about the public statements condemning the protests and repulsed that speaking up against antisemitism had become politicized. I wished that condemning antisemitism and protecting free speech at the same time could be a politically viable opinion in 2024. I felt bewildered by how politicians who once aligned themselves with Nazi sympathizers could be lauded as protectors of the Jewish people. I felt confused as to why defenders of equality and civil rights could not speak out against a minority of protesters espousing hate.”

Read the full article in The Daily Pennsylvanian here.