Column: Collective feasting returns as Good Friday, Passover, Ramadan coincide

Now the queen of seasons, bright

with the day of splendor,

with the royal feast of feasts

comes its joy to render!

— “Come, Ye Faithful” (Easter hymn)

In 2022, Good Friday and Passover coincide exactly, which happens rarely, though Easter and Passover seasons often overlap. Ramadan is almost all of April. And though it is a time for Muslims to fast, each day ends with the Iftar feast! So feasting is in the air on this Good Friday/Passover.  

Two local women represent the good that an open and hospitable table can bring — to religious congregations and their wider community. Kate Kroll is a mainstay in the First Christian Church, having moved here with her husband 70 years ago. Now a spry 95-year old, she is the “hostess with the mostest” in church and community. COVID forced her to pause some of her activities, but now her deep involvement with International students is strong again. In addition to family, for Easter dinner she’ll host students from at least six different countries, and she often takes them to ballgames and other events and activities.  

During Lent, she traveled for an hour to Washington to see several family members in the small Indiana town take part in a dramatic representation of the life of Christ.  And while her traditional “coffee fellowships” at the church were scuttled for two years, they are back — the first was on Palm Sunday, to be followed an even bigger “feast of feasts” for the season on Easter. Parishioners gather before church and then after for the best kind of “koinonia” fellowship. For a church known for its “open table,” Kroll's gift of hospitality makes that writ even larger. Feasts this weekend will be bigger and better than ever, and the meaning of “eucharistic” thanksgiving even more poignant.

Meanwhile, holding forth a unique Passover Seder tonight will be Lesley Levin, past president of Congregation Beth Shalom. Also an interfaith leader, Levin just finished a term as board chair for Monroe County United Ministries. Historically a largely Christian cooperative ministry, MCUM reached out to the Jewish community and Levin answered that need, providing stellar leadership.

For the first time in two years, she will be able to gather family and friends for tonight’s first Passover Seder, including 14 persons at the feast. It is typical, she says, for Jews to invite non-Jewish neighbors and friends to join them on this most important night of the year. Her menu reflects their inclusion.

As a longtime social worker, Levin is keenly aware of the needs of the local community and world. Her congregation is one of several in Bloomington providing help to Afghan refugee families. The needs of those suffering from the war in Ukraine are also uppermost in their minds, remembering that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish, and that the suffering of oppression and the desire for freedom is a strong theme of the Passover story.    

Both Kroll and Levin are grateful that for the first time in many months they will be able to gather folks together to celebrate the Easter and Passover holidays in more traditional ways. Those celebrations, each in its own way, will remember the ancestry of the Jewish people and the remarkable admonition of the Hebrew Bible: “Do not mistreat or abuse foreigners who live among you. Remember, you were once foreigners in Egypt." (Exodus 22:21)

And Passover even appears in a traditional Easter hymn:

Earth, tell it out abroad;

the Passover of gladness,

the Passover of God….

Let the round world keep triumph,

And all that is therein!

— John of Damascus, “The Day of Resurrection”