For a Jewish guy from Chicago who (Seder-wise) has been around – secular Seders, political Seders, LGBTQ Seders, and my own Nanna’s own distinctive Seder, from which references to “God” had been thoroughly scrubbed – Roxbury's recent annual Cape Verdean-Jewish Passover Seder was one for the books.
There’s nothing that unusual about unusual Passover Seders, the millennia-old Jewish celebration in which Jews recite, over a ritualized dinner, the biblical story of the Exodus, the Hebrews’ escape from slavery and journey to freedom. It’s a holiday that lends itself well to interpretation.
Multi-cultural Seders are a staple subgenre, and the Cape Verdean Jewish-Passover Seder, now in its eleventh year running, had all the essentials: three languages (Hebrew, English, and Cape Verdean Creole); music, ranging from a full Klezmer band to a Cape Verdean traditional courtship dance; and, of course, food, with Cape Verdean cuscus and Cachupa (a delicious corn stew) complimenting the standard fare of matzo and bitter greens.
But what makes this Seder remarkable is the degree to which it seems to have succeeded in creating something unique, and brimming with a distinct soul of its own.
The event, while supported by various groups, isn’t affiliated with a particular congregation or organization. It’s carried out by a dedicated volunteer committee, many of its members Cape Verdean Bostonians with no other ties to ritual Judaism.
And it is astoundingly popular: over a hundred guests — Jewish, Cape Verdean, both, neither — now pack Roxbury’s Hibernian Hall every year.
The inspiration for the Seder came first to its founder, Joel Schwartz, a Brookeline resident and Jewish history buff with an affinity for Cape Verdean culture, who realized that the two groups share a long history: Jews emigrated to Cape Verde in from Portugal in the 15th and 16th centuries and from Morocco in the 19th Century.
The religion didn’t particularly take hold on the Islands, but, people being people, many Cape Verdeans have some Jewish ancestry.
For Schwartz, this historical connection resonated with the force of biblical revelation.
“I’ve discovered this connection is far greater than I even imagined,” he declared, as the evidence of that pronouncement — a seemingly endless stream of guests— poured around him into the hall.
The Seder, he says, was an obvious choice. Cape Verdeans and Jews share a history of oppression. Cape Verde was a major hub of the transatlantic slave trade for centuries, and was governed by dictatorial colonial administrations until the mid-twentieth century.
Those comparisons could be made, of course, between many cultures.
But for whatever reason, the Cape Verdean-Jewish Seder worked in a way that has made it an event truly resonant for both groups.
There was the Haggadah itself, the traditional script for a Passover Seder from which participants read in turns: Supplementing the tale of Moses’ leading the Hebrews from Egypt was a brief history of the life and death of Cape Verdean anti-colonial leader Amílcar Cabral.
Manuel Da Luz Goncalves, recent author of the first-ever Cape Verdean Creole-to-English dictionary, took the stage to connect the survival of the Hebrew language to that of the beleaguered Cape Verdean Creole language.
Hebrew, Concalves noted, had survived “the horrors of slavery and colonialism … the holocaust, the diaspora.” Cape Verdean Creole, banned in schools, “But the people of Cape Verde persisted,” Goncalves declared to cheers across the room. “And resisted, resiliently, until the day of freedom!”
Schwartz’s delivered a little sermon of his own: “You know, there are people out there [who] want to separate us according to who’s an immigrant and who is born here, divide us up according to our religion, build walls, walls to keep us apart.”
“I’d rather be in a room full of people like you,” he declared, to more cheers, “who are building bridges!”
Sisters Linda Grey and Brenda Pires, 72 and 71 respectively, and third-generation Cape Verdean-Americans, had showed up, for the first time, with a 100-year-old photograph of their great-grandfather, who was Jewish.
“We wanted to know more,” said Grey, visibly reveling in the event, “and just to share more about what we knew with other people.”
They would become my table-mates, along with a Jewish-Cape Verdean couple Jesse and Sade Solomon and their kids, Yael and … Isaiah; and spouses Pauline Albrech and Ellen Levy, not a bit Cape Verdean, but who had just come out of interest.
In short order, this motley crew was chatting away like family.
By way of disclosure: As my new companions warmly passed me a Haggadah, a hunk of matzo, and a plastic cup with a bit of Manischewitz wine — I partook.
Every year for four thousand years, people have sat down at the Seder table and, over stale bread and sweet wine, told their stories. And as central as matzo itself is the tradition that there are no strangers, only guests. Who was I to break it.
