FROM THE ARCHIVES: THE UR-SEDER

Serving in the Season of Liberation: For Military Personnel, Passover in Iraq Summons History, Symbolism (Caryle Murphy, Washington Post, 4/5/04)

Shortly after sundown tonight, Dick Reed will join a small group of other American Jews in Baghdad for a Passover service at one of Saddam Hussein's former presidential palaces.

The unusual venue -- hardly imaginable a year ago -- is only one of the reasons the night will be like no other. . . .

Sometimes called the "season of liberation," the eight-day Passover holiday commemorates the Jews' escape from bondage in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago. The symbolism is not lost on Reed, 53, a Navy budget analyst who narrowly escaped death at the Pentagon during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack and who is on a six-month assignment as deputy comptroller for the U.S. governing authority in Iraq.

"I expect to have the Iraqi people very much in my thoughts during my Passover meal and services," the Fairfax County resident wrote in an e-mail from Baghdad. "I'm not smart enough to expound on the direct analogies between the Jews being saved from slavery and the Iraqis being saved from servitude to a demon like Saddam. But the analogy just somehow feels right to me.

"To help others gain freedom, which I'm doing; to celebrate freedom, which I'll be doing at Passover -- and to do this while living with an intensity that only one who has cheated death can," he added, "well, how much more deeply can something be felt?"

MORE: L'shanah haba'ah biyerushalayim

[Originally posted: 4/05/04]