Spicy Texas Passover at UT-Austin
Passover at the University of Texas at Austin this year will feature matzo with a hint of jalapeño. The Haggadahs will be in Hebrew, English and Spanish. The celebration will feature the sounds of a mariachi band, and the taste of guacamole will replace the more familiar maror and charoset. If past years are any indication, the March 26 seder at Hillel will draw more than two hundred participants.
But the gathering of Jewish and Latino students is more than just a reason to celebrate their respective cultures. Among the guests will be Carlos Spektor, a Jewish attorney in El Paso who founded Mexicanos en Exilio (Mexicans in Exile), a non-profit that provides free legal defense and support to Mexicans seeking political asylum in the U.S., and Harvey Burg, an attorney who fought for civil rights alongside African Americans during the 1960s. Additionally, several undocumented students will share stories about their fragile existence on campus.
Similar scenes of Jews and Latinos coming together are playing out at universities across the nation. UT-Austin, the University of California at Irvine and the University of Pennsylvania are just a few campuses where Latino-Jewish student groups have been formed. In Tucson, Arizona there is even a Jewish-Latino Teen coalition run by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona. This is the third year for the Latino-Jewish Freedom Seder, sponsored by the Latino Jewish Student Coalition at UT-Austin.
“Groups that have a similar cause or ideology can act together, because one big voice can help create change,” said Deborah Kolton, a Guatemalan Jew and a member of the coalition.
There is a long history of American Jews and Latinos working together, most visibly during the 1960s, when Jews joined César Chávez in his fight for farmer’s rights. Héctor Calderón, a professor and former director of the César Chávez Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, noted that Chávez’s speechwriter and personal aide was Marc Grossman, and that the first vice president of the United Farm Workers union, which Chávez co-founded, was Irv Hershenbaum. Both were Chávez’s longtime friends.
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/195147/spicy-texas-passover-at-ut-austin/#ixzz2wxHAvR6h
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Long article, but very interesting.
