Dear Fordham Community,

Passover is a festival when Jews remember the bondage of the Jewish people under the pharaohs in Egypt and give thanks for our deliverance. Central to Passover is the Seder—a large feast on the first two nights of Passover at which participants read and recite the Haggadah, which recounts the story of Exodus laden with songs and rabbinic interpretations. During the eight days of Passover, observers of the holiday are forbidden to eat bread or other foods with yeast. Instead, the only grain products we may eat are made with matzoh, a cracker-like unleavened bread. The story goes that in escaping, the Jews did not have time to let bread rise before baking.

Passover is principally celebrated in homes, rather than in synagogues. It is a time when families gather. I have attended seders every year of my life. Growing up, we went to our cousins. Later, my mother hosted our seders. Now we gather either in my sister Wendy’s or our own home. In addition to matzoh, Passover has many special foods that vary across Jewish communities worldwide. Although the word seder literally means “order,” seders in my family are inflected with a certain amount of chaos—a relaxed informality reflecting the joy of being together.

Many have reflected on the larger messages of Passover, including its emphasis on passing down history through generations and the connection we bear to our ancestors. The holiday’s central theme focuses on liberation from oppression through the combined power of human action and divine intervention. It has inspired Jews and oppressed peoples through the centuries.

Philosopher Michael Walzer has identified three elements in the story of the Exodus that liberation movements have looked to through the centuries:

First, oppression has a starting place—a metaphoric Egypt; second, there is a better place—a world that is more just, where humanity is more fully realized; and third, the path to that place lies through the wilderness—a journey which tests our character and resolve.

Whether you celebrate Passover or not, I hope the spring brings joy to your family and progress to the cause of freedom.

Happy Passover,
Matthew Diller, Dean
Fordham Law School

I write to wish you and your loved ones the blessings of Easter and Passover: those of family, fellowship, and food, and the peace that comes from knowing you are a part of cultures and traditions that reach back centuries.

It is fortuitous this year that the celebrations of these two great faiths overlap on Sunday, celebrating the renewal of hope and freedom from bondage, just as the end of this yearlong pandemic is in sight.

Those of you who would like to participate in Easter services at the University may attend virtually:

Easter Sunday Masses | April 4

Rose Hill | University Church
11 a.m. (Broadcast on WFUV FM 90.7), 2 p.m.

Lincoln Center | Bl. Rupert Mayer, S.J., Chapel | 5 p.m.

Livestream:
Lincoln Center Services: fordham.edu/lcmass
Rose Hill Services: fordham.edu/UC

I wish you all a joyous Easter and Passover.

Sincerely,

Joseph M. McShane, S.J.

For Christians, the week allows the faithful to commemorate the events of Jesus’ Passion, to mourn his death on Good Friday, and to celebrate his rising from the dead on Easter Sunday. Passover brings Jewish families together to share in the Seder, the ritual dinner that consists of storytelling, prayers, and symbolic food items.

But this year, with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing people to stay apart, families will miss out on these traditions.

“Normally, I would enter the Week in the company of a great throng of other believers and be buoyed up, consoled, and strengthened by their faith,” Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham wrote in his April 5 pastoral message. “Normally, I would enter with holy dread holding a bit of the upper hand over eager longing. Normally I would pause before plunging into the Week to ask for the grace to walk with the Lord Jesus with unflinching courage. Normally. But this year and this Holy Week are anything but normal. We will not find ourselves in the company of large throngs. We will enter it and walk through it in a solitary way. We will all of us enter it with more longing than usual.”

This solitude is in contrast with the instinct people of faith have during times like these, said J. Patrick Hornbeck, II, Ph.D., chair and professor of theology.

“Think about the last major set of crises in New York City—9/11, the financial crisis of [2008 to 2009], people in these moments reported coming together,” he said. “Folks came together in their houses of worship, whether those be churches, synagogues, mosques, or whatever it might be, and that of course parallels trends throughout history. People, when faced with life and death catastrophes, very often turn to their religious leaders for solace or guidance or comfort. I think it’s been particularly painful for believers, and for clergy too.”

Feeling the Absence

For Anne Golomb Hoffman, a professor of English and comparative literature at Fordham, this means moving her family’s ritual into a “Zoom Seder.”

While this will still allow them, and many other families who decide to celebrate virtually, to gather and participate in some of the songs and storytelling that goes along with the evening, it will be shorter and will lack the physical connection they are used to.

“We’ll acknowledge the difference and at the same time acknowledge the bonds that tie us together,” she said.

Around Passover, there’s always extra room at the table for people who might not have somewhere to go, Hoffman said, so that piece will be missing this year.

“This is so deeply a time when people gather together, and within my own synagogue community, there’s always an awareness of who might need a place at the Seder table,” she said. “There’s always that opening to a larger bringing of people together so I think there’s a terrible awareness of social isolation, social distancing, and our efforts to connect and to affirm.”

For Christians, the days leading up to Easter Sunday often incorporate many physical traditions that the church community participates in.

“Think of the foot washing on Holy Thursday, remembering how Jesus knelt before his disciples, like a lowly servant, to wash their feet,” said Thomas J. Scirghi, S.J., associate professor of theology. “On Good Friday, we will miss the veneration of the cross, when we individually express our gratitude for Christ’s suffering and accept the truth, that through the cross we have been saved. On Saturday night, at the Easter Vigil, we will miss seeing the new fire symbolizing Christ as the light of the world, leading us out of the darkness of sin to the light of eternal life.”

A Deeper, Personal Connection

But despite the absence of being physically present, both Scirghi and Hoffman said that these holy days, with the readings that come with them, are well suited to help believers get through these uncertain and challenging times.

Scirghi said that even during normal times, many Christians around the world don’t often have access to a priest or local church. For those who usually do have a local congregation, this experience of self-prayer and isolation can allow them to connect to those who usually don’t, as well as make their own connections with Jesus.

“It is a way to identify with Christ even more,” he said. “Your own experience of feeling isolated may give you an idea of what Jesus experienced. And, as we believe, he accepted all of this out of obedience to his Father, and for love of humanity. “

He also said that the Lenten season in general often has a feeling that “something is missing,” whether it’s the Gloria or the Alleluia that are removed from the liturgy for the entire 40 days, or how the altar is stripped on Holy Thursday and crucifixes and statues are covered throughout the week.

“We are living in the “absence,” that is, the awareness that something is missing, and we need to wait for it to be filled again,” Scrighi said. “Catholics do not fear absence. The Lenten liturgy is “filled with” the absence … all this time we live in the absence. How countercultural. The popular culture would have us fill up whenever we feel empty. But now we wait, aware of what is missing, praying patiently for the day when the Lord will return in glory.”

Hoffman said for Passover, the story of how the Jewish people escaped bondage in Egypt also offers a chance to reflect on current events.

“An amazing facet of this retelling is the commandment that each person should experience this coming out of bondage, this liberation, as if it’s happening to you,” she said. “In the modern era, the Haggadah, this text that sort of guides your prayers and retelling, is open to contemporary (issues)—to the Holocaust, to the birth of the state of Israel, to the refugee crisis—it is a text that opens up to acknowledging a particular historical moment that people are in.”

For this moment, in the midst of a pandemic, Hoffman said people can look to the Passover story and see how a collective group can get through a struggle together.

“There’s a collective affirmation of ‘we come through this together’ and it’s really open toward the larger human community—I think that’s really a facet of the Seder in the modern era,” she said. “It’s very Jewish and very historically Jewish and at the same time, it incorporates a recognition that the narratives of liberation, of bondage, are something shared with the larger human community.”

Connecting Virtually

The COVID-19 pandemic has required many faith leaders to get creative with how they can provide virtual offerings to their communities, Hornbeck said.

“The starter version of this for religious communities seems to be live streaming services that they previously did not livestream,” he said. “There’s obviously advantages to that—people who are looking for something like “normal” in their lives, they can pull up a video and they can see something like their ordinary service. The downside though, is a unidirectional experience—you watch passively while someone somewhere else does something.”

Some communities, such as the Church of Heavenly Rest, an Episcopal church in New York City, have taken to adding new offerings to connect people during this time, such as a daily prayer group with an active live chat, Hornbeck said.

“The chat function there has proven to be really valuable because folks can write out their prayers and everyone can see them,” he said. “You can have the official service going on and then also individual reflections going on.”

Scirghi said that he believes there’s something for the clergy and participants to learn from this period of virtual worship.

“Perhaps this new experience will provide a new perspective on our regular worship, so that we may come to see and hear in a new way,” he said. “We may notice our prayers and rituals anew. If nothing else, the virtual worship may leave us longing for ‘the real thing,’ that is, to get back inside the church alongside the people of God.”

WFUV 90.7 FM and wfuv.org will air Fordham’s Good Friday service at 8 p.m. on April 10 and Easter Sunday Mass at 11 a.m. on April 12. Easter Sunday’s Mass will also be live streamed.

For more information, visit fordham.edu/info/20094/campus_ministry.

Magda Teter, PhD, the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies, mounted the exhibition, her second this year, with Fordham Libraries in the O’Hare Special Collections Library at the Rose Hill campus.

In the exhibition, however, she said the sacred is counterbalanced by the profane, as it captures both the meaning the holidays have had for Jews and Christians, and displays their painful convergence through several items that depict nearly 600 years’ worth of anti-Jewish imagery.

Teter said that she didn’t want to gloss over the reality of the violence and hatred that Christians subjected Jews to during Easter and Passover festivals. Some of the materials in the show served as propaganda to stoke hatred of the Jews.

Some of the images are disturbing.

There are several depictions of a child being bled by Jews. A frequent anti-Semitic accusation against Jews was that they murdered Christians for their blood and used it in Passover rituals, an accusation known as the blood libel. Some of the images were inspired by the cult of Simon of Trent, a boy whose disappearance around Easter in 1475 was blamed on the Jews of this northern Italian town. Many Catholics venerated Simon, until in the aftermath of the Church’s Vatican II the cult of the boy was abolished.

Among the items on display are:

• engravings from two editions of the famous 15^th century world chronicle that portray the bleeding of a child, with images of Jews as grotesque characters
• the Easter issue of an Italian magazine, La difesa della razza (The Defense of Race), from 1940 that once again return to the theme of blood libel;
• German currency from 1922 that celebrates burning Jews;
• an 1884 parody of the Haggadah by German artist Carl Maria Seyppel.

Teter noted that Fordham is an appropriate setting for the exhibition, as the Jesuits are not known for shying away from difficult issues.

What is disturbing is balanced by beauty, however, as precious facsimiles of the famous 14th-century Barcelona Haggadah, the Gradual of Gisela, and the magnificent 13th-century Biblia de San Luis are also on display. All are gifts of longtime library patron James Leach, MD. The books use contemporary color printing methods to achieve exacting color replications. The gold leaf, however, is applied by hand and can be found throughout both texts.

Although not an alumnus, Dr. Leach has developed a relationship with Fordham based on his love for the Church and for lifelong knowledge, he said. He remembers the first time he heard Mass in Latin at Holy Trinity Church in Passaic, New Jersey. From there his interest in medieval texts and manuscripts grew, he said.

“I think people say you see God in church architecture, and in the stained glass, but God is also in the illuminations alongside the printed word,” he said.

The aesthetic and intellectual intensity of the exhibit’s three main showcases are complemented with a display of ephemera as well. Some ephemera alongside the back wall of the special collections gallery includes Haggadot in many languages, including in Arabic and Amharic. There are also a few printed as commercial promotions for Streit’s Matzos and Maxwell House Coffee—which are ubiquitous to American Jewish households, said Teter, and which often became household keepsakes.

On behalf of the University and the Board of Trustees, please accept our fond wishes for a Blessed Easter and a Chag Sameach. We hope this week ushers in a season of joy for every member of the Fordham family, of every faith, every day.

Sincerely,

Joseph M. McShane, SJ
President