3 Ways To Honor Harriet Tubman on Passover
Image by wikimedia commons
By Talya Zax April 21, 2016
Giving into popular, “Hamilton”-loving demand, the Treasury Department has announced that instead of replacing Alexander Hamilton with a woman on the $10 bill, they’ll be making room by knocking Andrew Jackson off the $20. And their choice to replace him? Harriet Tubman.
The announcement was met with mixed responses. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew initially promised to revamp the $10 bill with a woman last June, and while many are happy to see Tubman slated for the $20, women’s groups have expressed frustration that choosing to bump Jackson rather than Hamilton means a longer wait before the famous abolitionist gets to front the currency.
The announcement was timely, however, in one way: Tubman, famous for helping hundreds of slaves to freedom, was called “Moses” by fellow abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. (The name stuck; a 1978 miniseries on Tubman was called “A Woman Called Moses,” and Sarah Bradford’s 2004 biography of Tubman was titled “Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People.”) As we prepare to observe Passover beginning this weekend, here are three ways to make Tubman’s legacy part of your celebration.
Get involved in the fight against the modern slave trade
Unfortunately, the slave trade is still strong in 2016; according to the Walk Free Foundation, in 2014, 38.5 million people lived in slavery around the world. It’s often disguised, unlike the slavery of the Jews in Egypt or African Americans in the early United States. While we gather to celebrate our own liberation, Tubman’s example can serve as a reminder that the best way to respect our own liberation is to work to help others achieve theirs. To learn more about how you can help, visit the Walk Free Foundation’s website, check out CNN’s Freedom Project, and learn from these tips from the U.S. Department of State.
Talk about the complicated legacy of slave-owning Jews
Jews who participated in Europe’s colonization of the Americas were frequently slave-owners. When the Forward attended the opening of a Princeton Art Museum exhibit on early American-Jewish art this year, a curator explained that early American Jews were split on the issue of slavery, a division that shaped the development of American Jewry. Talking about the role of Jews in American slavery lets us honor Tubman and deepen our understanding of Passover’s contemporary significance. There are many books available on the subject; Eli Faber’s “Jews, Slaves and the Slave Trade” is a good place to start.
Make your Seder more culturally inclusive
Shais Rishon published a moving piece on Tablet earlier this week, “For African-American Jews, The History’s in the Charoset,” on the significance of Passover for African-American Jews. “For us, the Seder plate isn’t something symbolic of an event that happened to ‘ancestors’ a long, long time ago in a country far, far away,” he wrote. “It’s about experiences that happened to family — our grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great grandparents— of whom we own photographs and maybe even have had the privilege of actually knowing, in the country we still actually live in.” Learning more about the African American Jewish experience, and incorporating culturally diverse elements into your Seder (like Rishon’s Charoset recipe), is a great way to incorporate Tubman’s legacy in your Passover celebrations.
Talya Zax is the Forward’s culture intern. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
