Secular Seder Celebration : Controversial Jewish School Sponsors a Non-Religious Passover Service

It was a Passover Seder with a difference.

There was the usual array of matzo, hard-boiled eggs and horseradish. Several times during the service, the celebrants, mostly children and their parents, rose and sat in accordance with custom. And, as always, they sang song after song about freedom.

Yet there was something unusual about this recent gathering at a clubhouse in early observance of the 3,000-year-old holiday commemorating events surrounding the Jewish exodus from Egypt.

Instead of the traditional plagues of blood, frogs and lice that the Old Testament teaches God sent to wreak havoc on the Egyptians, the service mentioned such modern-day curses as racism, pollution and political malfeasance. And unlike Seders that praise God for His deliverance of the Jewish people, the Seal Beach service exhorted participants to “struggle, work . . . organize, sit in and speak out” on behalf of those less fortunate.

That’s because the majority of the celebrants are atheists, said Karen Knecht, one of the organizers. Instead of relying on help from above, they believe in relying on themselves. And instead of belief in a Supreme Being, she said, “they have a strong emotional attachment to the Jewish people.”

Knecht is the head teacher and administrator of a controversial Garden Grove Sunday school based on the same philosophy. Called the Orange County Kindershule, it’s a religious institution with a twist: Its teachers never mention God.

“We offer a Jewish education based on culture, tradition and the arts,” Knecht said of the school, which sponsored the recent non-religious Seder. “All of the things that make somebody Jewish without the religious tie-in.”

While the school itself has only 16 students, many believe that its philosophy is shared by thousands of other Jews who remain unaffiliated.

“The majority of Jews in the world today are secular Jews,” said Rabbi Irvin Brandwein, the conservative spiritual leader of Temple Beth Emet in Anaheim. “They are clearly within the boundaries of the Jewish people and have an important role to play.”

That role in Orange County began 33 years ago when the kindershule (Yiddish for “children’s school”) was founded by members of the Jewish Secular Assn., which traces its roots to the beginnings of European socialism during the last century.

After moving from place to place and even meeting in members’ homes for a time, the school eventually settled at the Garden Grove Girls Club, where it now holds weekly classes for children between the ages of 5 and 12.

The curriculum, according to Knecht, is largely devoid of religious content. Among other things, she said, the students study Jewish history, art, music, folk dance, literature and cooking. Instead of Hebrew, the language of the Bible, they are taught Yiddish, the Germanic language that was common among Eastern European Jews before World War II. And though most Jewish holidays are observed, Knecht said, they are interpreted in non-religious ways.

The parting of the Red Sea during Passover, for instance, is attributed to an earthquake or low tide rather than a miracle of God. Similarly, Knecht said, the rain of frogs is shown to be a natural, albeit rare, phenomenon caused by unusual rain patterns. And the darkness said to have descended on Egypt is explained as a probable eclipse.

It is a curiosity about cultural identity, in fact, that leads many people to enroll their children in the kindershule, which is supported entirely by tuition.

Willem Van der Pol, for instance, who was raised Protestant and now calls himself an atheist, said he considers his children culturally Jewish because their mother is.

“This is the only non-religious Jewish entity where my kids can learn some Jewish traditions and culture and be part of the larger Jewish community,” said Van der Pol, 38, an administrator at Cal State Fullerton. “It gives them an identity.”

Ken Kreindel, on the other hand, said he sends his children to kindershule because he attended the same school as a child 30 years ago. “My family has always been Jewish, although we were never brought up in a temple,” said Kreindel, 41, the owner of a small restaurant in Long Beach. “We’re not religious at all, but we want them to know where they come from.”

Not all Jews agree, however, that secular education will achieve that continuity. The Orange County Kindershule, in fact, has raised the ire of some traditional Jews who see it as an unhealthy lure from the belief in one God, which they see as the cornerstone of their faith.

“It won’t succeed,” Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, head of the conservative Temple Eilat in Mission Viejo, said of the secular movement. “Judaism is so permeated by religion that I don’t think you can take the religion out and have much left.”

Rabbi David Eliezrie, Orthodox head of the North County Chabad Center in Yorba Linda, while praising the secularists’ adherence to their Jewish identity, agrees.

“Judaism devoid of spirituality and a belief in God is a contradiction in terms,” he said. “I consider this a diversion from the mainstream of Jewish life, which has always enshrined as its central conviction a belief in one God. We have seen that whenever a group has moved away from the mainstream of Jewish theology that over history it has become but another memory.”

Such attitudes have sometimes created a feeling of isolation among kindershule parents, Knecht said.

“We don’t feel readily accepted,” she allowed. “We are still on the outside.”

Yet during the recent Seder, the mood was anything but somber.

“The Jews have a long and rich tradition,” Van der Pol said, amid the shuffle of paper plates and the glow of candles. “Since my children are part of it, they should learn about it.”