What do you think about when you think of the Passover seder?
That’s the question that the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning asked of 11 filmmakers. The resulting films–one for each of the 14 steps of the seder–make up Projecting Freedom, a series of short meditations on each ritual.
Some films dive into the metaphorical side of the rituals. For instance, the film about urhatz, the hand-washing ritual, shows different ideas of cleansing: A surgeon washing his hands before performing an operation; a rubber ducky floating in a bathtub. Others aren’t so abstract. The video for motzi matzah, eating matzah, features different silly situations of people karate-chopping matzah, crumbling matzah on the ground, breaking matzah to a danceable beat.
These films won’t teach you the Four Questions or the traditional way to retell the Passover story, but they’re not meant to. Instead, they’re artists’ interpretations of these traditions–embracing those traditions, challenging them, encouraging us to think about them.
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