When 150 inmates of Rikers Island, New York Metropolis’s largest jail complicated, attended Passover seders on Wednesday evening, copies of a printed letter awaited them at their seats.
The letter, written by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, wished its readers a “Chag Pesach Sameach” and likened the incarcerated individuals’s “loneliness and despair,” in addition to their dedication, to the emotions of the Jews within the Passover exodus story.
“Just like the Jewish individuals in Egypt, you too maintain quick to your religion within the face of the unknown,” Mamdani’s letter learn. “And just like the Jewish individuals in Egypt, you achieve this whereas typically wrestling with bitter emotions of loneliness and despair.”
These weren’t the primary Passover seders on Rikers Island. Volunteers have visited the complicated to steer seders and different Jewish providers for greater than a decade.
However this week’s seders, and Mamdani’s letter, got here because the mayor faces scrutiny from segments of the town’s Jewish group over his views on Israel and continued alignment with pro-Palestinian protesters. Days earlier, the mayor’s attendance at a Manhattan seder sparked some tense moments, and led the Israeli-American comic Modi Rosenfeld to cancel his look.
His letter was additionally written per week after two Rikers Island detainees died throughout the identical week, including gas to Mamdani’s objective of closing the jail complicated “as rapidly as attainable.”
Rabbi Abby Stein, a progressive activist and Mamdani supporter, led a girls’s seder on Rikers on Wednesday and wrote afterwards that it was “some of the significant seders I’ve ever skilled.”
“True liberation will solely include this positioned [sic] closed down,” she wrote. “Till then, we are going to hold displaying up.”
A few weeks earlier, Mamdani himself visited Rikers Island for an iftar dinner, praying and breaking the Ramadan quick with a gaggle of inmates.
On Wednesday, Mamdani’s letter used a few Passover traditions for example the poor dwelling circumstances within the jail complicated. Citing the central query of Passover — “Why is that this evening totally different from all different nights?” — he wrote that these observing Passover on Rikers “with out pillows to recline, consuming the identical matzo you could eat year-round” would have a tougher time answering that query.
His letter to the Rikers seder-goers talked about the style of “Hillel sandwiches of matzo, maror and charoset,” including that “we don’t style bitterness alone.”
“As a substitute, it’s blended with a sweetness — the sweetness of redemption, the sweetness of a greater day to come back,” he wrote.
Hold native Jewish information on the desk. From the Seder plate to Metropolis Corridor, we deliver you the tales that join our group. Your Passover reward ensures that unbiased journalism stays an important a part of Jewish life in New York.
