The Meanings of Freedom at a Seder on Rikers Island
Scott Blumenthal and Henry Goldschmidt
Two weeks ago, on the second night of Passover, I (Scott) sat with five men currently detained in the North Infirmary jail facility on Rikers Island. One of them, an Ethiopian Jew, led our little group through the Haggadah – the text that structures the Passover seder, retelling the story of the ancient Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. He loved a good six-hour seder, he said, with plenty of time to debate rabbinic perspectives, like the Lubavitchers and other Hasidim do it. But he didn’t need any of that intellectual stuff this year. “This is my time to come out of slavery,” he said. “To feel the desert sand under my feet, and the sun on the back of my neck.”
I first visited Rikers in April 2023, as one of the volunteers facilitating and participating in last year’s seders. I had visited the maximum-security Sing Sing Correctional Facility many times, to worship with Quakers in custody there, but Rikers Island was still a shock – vast, run-down, and chaotic. New York City is legally required to close Rikers Island’s jails by August 2027, but in the meantime Jewish New Yorkers held there do their best to celebrate Passover in the Island’s deteriorating gymnasiums. I’ve gotten to know some of these folks over the past nine months, while visiting Rikers as a volunteer chaplain through my work at ICNY. I’ve learned about their struggles to preserve their health and dignity, maintain connections with their families, and seek fair treatment from the legal system. I’ve talked and prayed with them about their visions of freedom, and their hopes for life beyond Rikers Island.
The Passover seder’s vision of freedom focuses on the drama of liberation from slavery, culminating in the plague that killed the firstborn son of every Egyptian, the destruction of Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea, and the miraculous dryshod escape of the enslaved Israelites. But if we read the biblical narrative of the torturous 40-year journey that followed – not to mention the fraught process of conquest and settlement in Canaan – we are reminded that liberation from slavery is only the beginning of true freedom.
What exactly does freedom mean for ancient Israelites or New Yorkers today? What could it possibly mean on Rikers Island? The answers aren’t always as clear as the seder’s binary opposition between slavery and liberation.
I (Henry) first visited Rikers in April 2024, when I joined Scott and others to volunteer at one of this year’s seders. The experience was profoundly moving – partly for the observance of Passover, but mostly for the opportunity to connect personally with people in custody who are often reduced to bigoted stereotypes or bureaucratic statistics.
I sat, talked, and helped lead a seder with a group of seven or eight men currently detained in the Otis Bantam Correctional Center on Rikers. My table included some folks raised in Jewish families, others who were drawn to Jewish practice at Rikers, and one who acknowledged he had only signed up to get a better-than-average dinner. (Though, perhaps surprisingly, he was deeply engaged in the seder, hanging on every word of the relatively brief, abridged Haggadah.) Our conversation didn’t usually dwell on my tablemates’ incarceration, but there were a few points in the seder when this fact seemed inescapable. For example, there’s a passage right before the meal when participants express their gratitude to God for freedom. I can’t remember the exact wording in the Haggadah we used at Rikers, but it was a contemporary version of this ancient prayer:
Thus it is our duty to thank, laud, praise, glorify, exalt, and honor the Holy One who did all these miracles for our forefathers and for us. God took us from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from mourning to festivity, from deep darkness to great light, and from bondage to redemption.
Following this passage I asked, a bit hesitantly, if my tablemates felt any contradiction or ambivalence thanking God for freedom while held in detention? I didn’t want to pry, I told them, but I was curious to hear how this prayer landed in a Rikers gym.
Three or four guys answered, and in different but overlapping terms they all stressed the importance of the freedom they found in the seder itself – in the moment of worship and fellowship we were sharing. “Are you kidding,” one said, “this right here is a taste of freedom.” At least the guards aren’t hassling us, another pointed out. (There were dozens of guards there, but most hugged the wall, chatting among themselves, and eating their own dinner of Popeye’s Chicken.) And we’re free from the fear of getting jumped or cut by all the crazy people in here, another added. We can let our guard down for a little while – free, for a few hours, from the psychic burden of incarceration.
I don’t mean to minimize the unfreedom of people held at Rikers, over 90% of whom are still awaiting trial and have not been convicted of the crimes they’re charged with – including one guy at my table who’d been awaiting trial for precisely 1,556 days and counting. The fact that a few people in custody can find “a taste of freedom” at a Passover seder does not excuse the profound injustices suffered by so many of our incarcerated neighbors, or release other New Yorkers from our obligation to advocate the closure of Rikers and the creation of a more just criminal justice system. However, my tablemates’ thoughtful reflections on freedom can add new depth to the Passover seder, and help us all reflect on the tension between freedom and constraint in our own lives.
People in custody on Rikers Island understand that their journey towards freedom may begin while they’re still held in detention, and will no doubt continue long after they’re released. Freedom is not simply the opposite of incarceration, but requires a degree of autonomy, security, and self-determination. Freedom is an ongoing struggle to define a community to which we may be held accountable; to discover the laws by which we consent to live; to seek knowledge of the God with whom we enter into a covenant – whatever we may conceive that God to be.
Some Jews hope for a more conclusive sort of freedom when they end the seder with the words “Next year in Jerusalem!” But I (Scott) think that Passover should remind us of the power and limits of the freedom we’ve already been given – whether we are detained on Rikers Island or sitting comfortably with our families. Our freedom leaves us scared or disappointed as often as it leads us to raise our voices in celebration. Freedom is not a distant homeland, but a terrible and wonderful reality that should humble us. It confronts us with our limitations, our fallibility, our reliance on each other, and on that which concerns us ultimately.
Still, though redemption may be elusive – wandering in the desert may just be the human condition – we must sometimes stop to “feel the desert sand under [our] feet, and the sun on the back of [our] neck.” Even in Rikers.