CAMBRIDGE — The celebration on the second night of Passover was laid out with Seder plates on green picnic tables pushed together and topped with floral arrangements of peonies and white and light pink roses. Students passed around matzah and loaded plates with grilled carrots and asparagus, chicken, kugel, and soup.
But this was a far-from-ordinary Seder, taking place Tuesday evening at MIT as the campus and other schools around the country are riven by protest over the Israel-Hamas war. It was organized by a student group, Jews for Ceasefire, which had modified the traditional Passover ceremonies with flourishes that included strawberries to represent Gaza, and watermelon, which has come to symbolize Palestinian solidarity.
It took place under the cover of a large black tent marked “liberated zone,” within a larger demonstration on a grassy expanse at MIT where students had organized a tent encampment, one of many that sprouted on college campuses in the wake of the arrests of protesting students at Columbia University in New York last week. Organizers passed out a version of the Haggadah, the text that guides the Passover meal in celebration of Jewish liberation from Egyptian slavery, that had been adapted by Columbia students and was titled “Gaza Liberation Seder.”
“Passover is a story of Jews finding liberation and freedom, so it has a lot of resonance for us here as we’re thinking about what liberation looks like in a wider context,” said Gabriella Martini, 32, a founding member of Jews for Ceasefire and a second year master’s student in MIT’s city planning program.
Martini said that she spent Monday night in the tent encampment, and that Jewish students have been represented within the encampment population since Sunday.
“I think that this is a space for everyone. If you look around, it’s an incredibly diverse group of people. It’s people from all over the world and all over the country and all different religious backgrounds and all different ethnic backgrounds, and we’ve never been anything but welcome here.”
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The colorful scene around the Seder site featured Palestinian flags and protest signs and included some students wearing head scarves, some with yarmulkes. Many sat shoulder to shoulder, talking and laughing in the sun.
“For them to have a Seder in the midst of our demonstration and encampment, I think really demonstrates the intersectionality of our movement and the diversity of our movement,” said Zeno, a 35-year-old graduate student who said he goes by the single name. “And as we stand together as sisters and brothers to break bread, I think it’s a very special moment.”
The encampment at MIT, and others at Emerson College and Tufts University, were relatively quiet and nonconfrontational compared to scenes at other prestigious campuses across the United States.
By Tuesday afternoon, more than 15 tents dotted both Emerson’s main alleyway across from Boston Common and the lawn next to MIT’s Kresge Auditorium. Students said they will not leave until their universities agree to support a cease-fire in Gaza and divest any financial ties their schools may have with Israel.
MIT officials declined to comment on the students’ demands.
The protests had been bubbling for months but kicked into a higher gear after more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia University’s Manhattan campus were arrested last week.
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Earlier this week, the MIT Israel Alliance, an advocacy group for Jews on campus, called for administrators to clear the encampment, citing concern for their safety given the proximity of the protesters to the Hillel Center for Jewish Students.
“It’s infuriating, it’s traumatizing, it’s sad,” said Talia Khan, an MIT graduate student and co-president of the Israel Alliance, who added that she and other students changed their Passover plans because of the encampment.
Since the war began, colleges and universities have struggled to balance safety with free speech rights. Many long tolerated protests but are now doling out more discipline.
The protests have pitted students against each other, with those supporting Palestinians demanding their schools condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza and divest from companies that sell weapons to Israel, while some Jewish students say much of the criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitism.
Avi Balsam, a sophomore studying computer science and math at MIT, went home to New Jersey on Sunday to spend Passover with his family. Balsam wears a yarmulke and said he was concerned for his safety, especially after hearing from friends on other campuses who have experienced antisemitism and harassment in recent days.
”At MIT, we haven’t had any physical violence yet, which I’m very thankful for,” Balsam said. “But, I mean, there was a protest on Friday at which people were chanting, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine is Arab’ in Arabic, which I see as a direct call for ethnic cleansing or genocide against Jews in Israel. That’s very worrisome to me.”
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Balsam said he supports students’ right to protest, and notes that MIT has a long history of civil disobedience on its campus. But he urged his peers to be more careful with their language.
”If you’re protesting something as delicate and as controversial as the Israel-Palestine conflict, with the potential to really cause harm to a large portion of students on campus, you have to be very careful [with] what language you’re using at protests,” Balsam said.
On Tuesday morning at MIT, some tents had signs bearing the names of Khan Yunis, Deir Yassin, and other Gazan cities that were abandoned or destroyed in the conflict, which has left more than 34,000 Gazans dead and an unknown more experiencing hunger, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The war followed the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, where militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages.
“For actual Palestinians, many of them cannot actually visit these cities,” Safiyya Ogundipe, an MIT senior studying chemical engineering, said Tuesday.
Isa Liggans, 21, a Muslim and third-year student from Maryland studying computer science and electrical engineering, said he had not been to a Seder before Tuesday evening.
“Personally, I don’t know much about the Jewish community or Jewish practices,” Liggans said. “And so this was a learning experience for me. Listening about the stories that they tell and the practices they do was a really different thing for me.”
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Liggans said he felt compelled to join his fellow students in the protests.
“I feel a little bit of obligation to be out here and do what I can to help them out,” he said. “I’ve heard from some students, and you could really see that this is the kind of environment that they were looking for. . . having a space where people have common values, doing the right thing, just chilling out, no one is antagonizing anyone. It’s cool.”
At Tufts in Medford, a small number of demonstrators and tents were present on a section of the academic quad, according to university spokesperson Patrick Collins.
“Classes and university business continue as normal,” said Collins. He said Tufts officials continue to closely monitor the situation, and anyone who engages in conduct that violates university policy will be held accountable., he said.
With tensions at Columbia continuing to run high and some students afraid to set foot on the campus, officials said the New York school will switch to hybrid learning for the rest of the semester.
Many universities have about two weeks of classes left before the semester ends and have been grappling with how to handle the protests. At MIT, the last day of classes is scheduled for May 14.
On Monday in Connecticut, police arrested 60 protesters — including 47 students — at Yale University, after they refused to leave an encampment on Beinecke Plaza. Yale president Peter Salovey said protesters had declined an offer to end the demonstration and meet with trustees. After several warnings, school officials determined “the situation was no longer safe” so police cleared the encampment and made arrests.
In the Midwest, protesters set up more than 30 tents at the University of Michigan, while at the University of Minnesota, nine protesters were arrested Tuesday morning after police took down an encampment soon after it was set up in front of the library.
Hilary Burns and Emily Sweeney of the Globe Staff contributed to this report. Material from Globe wire services was also used.
Lila Hempel-Edgers can be reached at lila.hempeledgers@globe.com. Follow her on X @hempeledgers and on Instagram @lila_hempel_edgers. Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez. Esmy Jimenez can be reached at esmy.jimenez@globe.com. Follow her @esmyjimenez.