Passover-Tel Aviv, 1917
“On the Passover of 1917, the Turkish rulers of the country ordered the residents of Tel-Aviv to evacuate the city. Almost 8,000 people were listed for expulsion. A sense of dispossession accompanied the eviction notice. The expulsion was in effect exile from the homeland. Anxiety-ridden settlers prepared to leave their homes, although not from Egypt but, for a considerable number, to refuge in Egypt. Many felt the symbolism of their plight. In the north of the country, at the settlement of Kinneret (on the Sea of Galilee), refugees and members of several kevutzot sat down for a special fraternity Seder among religious and non-religious Jews, workers and land-owners. They awaited the Exodus from Egypt in the form of liberation from the Ottoman government.
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A great fear of genocide pervaded the air. On the eve of World War I the Yishuv numbered 85,000. At the outset of the war 12,000 Jews who rejected Ottoman citizenship left the country. Most went to Egypt. The following year the country was flooded with rumors of the horrific massacre of the Armenians. The communal Seder at Kinneret demonstrated the wish for unity during the severe crisis. As far as we know, the collective meal was accompanied with profuse singing and wildflower decorations, and one of the pioneers who prepared the meal and covered the gray tables declaimed one of Bialik’s poems. The Seder did not announce itself as iconoclastic or revolutionary. The traditional haggada seems to have been kept, but the atmosphere was different.
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Tel-Aviv’s religiously-observant refugees now lodged in the north of the county were in the most vexatious situation. They hoped that there would be matzot for Passover, but this was not the case. No Seder was held that evening, and the pious among the Tel-Aviv evacuees were left with a deep scar. Ironically, Passover in Eretz-Israel was cancelled, whereas those who left for to Egypt celebrated the holiday. There was an overriding sense of fear and privation in the country; the nightmare had brought everything to a halt, even sacred tradition. But in the darkest days of the crucible, something new was revealed.”
Muki Tsur, “Pesach in the Land of Israel: Kibbutz Haggadot” in Israel Studies, 12, 2007, 80-81. For more on the expulsion of the Jews from Tel Aviv see here, here, and here.