Just as the theme of liberation and freedom extends from the struggles of the early Israelites to escape from bondage in Egypt to the struggles of African-Americans to escape from the bondage of slavery in the South and other states after the Civil War and to the present struggle to escape from the oppressive bondage of Jim Crow laws in the South and the oppressive effects of segregation and racism in our time, our celebration of the courageous women who led in the fight to free their people extends from Shifah and Puah in ancient times to African-American women in our time such as Ella Baker, director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Fannie Lou Hamer, leader of the Mississippi Freedom DemocraticParty, Diane Nash, leader of the Nashville Student Freedom Ride Campaign and founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Rosa Parks, who in 1955 was arrested for refusing to give her seat to a white passenger and move to the back of the bus-an act of civil disobedience that led to the three hundred and eighty-six  day boycott that was a keystone of the modern civil rights movement just as Shifah and Puah's act of civil disobedience in refusing to kill Jewish babies was a keystone in the liberation of the early Israelites from bondage in Egypt. So tonight we celebrate these brave and courageous women who were true leaders in the struggle for freedom and liberation.


haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story