Passover: Four More Questions
A Passage to be Read in the Passover Haggadah After the Tale of the Five Rabbis in B’nei B’raq
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow, www.shalomctr.org,
Let us therefore tonight expand upon the story of our deliverance from slavery by asking:
Why is this Pesach night different from every other Pesach night?
Because on every Pesach night — tonight as well –
We call out to another people, “Let our people go!”
But tonight we also hear another people
Calling out to us: “Let our people go!”
Tonight the children of Hagar through Ishmael
and the children of Sarah through Isaac
call out to each other:
We too are children of Abraham!
We are cousins, you and we!
As Isaac and Ishmael once met at Beir LaChai Ro-i,
the Well of the Living One Who Sees,
So it is time for us to meet –
Time for us to see each other, face to face.
Time for us to make peace with each other.
They met for the sake of their dead father, Abraham;
We must meet for the sake of our dead children –
Dead at each others’ hands.
For the sake of our children’s children,
So that they not learn to kill.
And so tonight we must ask ourselves four new questions:
(1) Why does the Torah teach: “When a stranger lives-as-a-stranger with you in your land, you shall not oppress him. The stranger who lives-as-a-stranger [hager hagar] with you shall be as one of your citizens; you shall love her as yourself.”
Because Hagar Mamitzria [Hagar the Egyptian] was a stranger in your midst, and “because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt.”
(2) Why do we break the matzah in two?
Because the bread of affliction becomes the bread of freedom –when we share it. Because the Land that gives bread to two peoples must be divided in two, so that both peoples may eat of it. So long as one people grasps the whole land, it is a land of affliction. When each people can eat from part of the Land, it will become a land of freedom.
(3) Why do we dip herbs twice, once in salt water and once in sweet charoset?
First for the tears of two peoples, Israeli and Palestinian; then for the sweetness of two peoples, Palestinian and Israeli; for the future of both peoples, who must learn not to repeat the sorrows of the past but to create the joys of the future.
(4) Why is there an egg upon the Pesach plate?
It is the egg of birthing. When we went forth from Mitzrayim, the Narrow Place, its narrowness became our birth canal.
It was the painful birthtime of our people, the People of Israel; and today we are witnessing the painful birth of freedom for another people, the People of Palestine.
When the midwives Shifrah and Puah
Saved the children that Pharaoh ordered them to kill,
That was the beginning of the birth-time;
When Pharaoh’s daughter joined with Miriam
To give a second birth to Moses from the waters,
She birthed herself anew into God’s daughter, Bat-yah,
And our people turned to draw ourself toward life.
When God became our Midwife
And named us Her firstborn,
Though we were the smallest and youngest of the peoples,
The birthing began;
When the waters of the Red Sea broke,
We were delivered.
So tonight it is our task to help the Midwife
Who tonight is giving birth to a new people –
And so to give a new birth to ourselves.
The book of Exodus, just before the first passover, records that Pharaoh was ready to let the Israelites leave Egypt “But the Lord stiffened
Pharaoh’s heart and he would not agree to let them go” (Exod. 10:27).* The idea that it is God and not Pharaoh who is hardening Pharaoh’s heart is repeated several times throughout the account, including at the beginning (Exod. 7:3). Then, the scriptures reveal that the Lord told Moses to have the Israelites “borrow” gold and silver from their Egyptian neighbors, all of whom were “disposed … favorably” towards the Israelites. Next, Moses describes how the Lord says that He “will go forth among the Egyptians, and every first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the first-born of the slave girl who is behind the millstones; and all the first-born of the cattle. And there shall be a loud cry in all the land of Egypt, such as has never been or will ever be again.” (Exod. 11:4-6). It is important to note that God is not perpetrating this mass killing in order to free the Israelites. No, according to scripture, it is merely an opportunity to show off the “marvels” of God as he frees the Israelites (Exod. 11:9).
On the appointed night, “the Lord struck down all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh … to the first-born of the captive who was in the dungeon … there was a loud cry in Egypt; for there was no house where there was not someone dead” (Exod. 12:29-30). But the Lord /passed over/ the houses of the Israelites and none of them were killed. This is the event that is commemorated every year in the Jewish liturgical calendar as Passover.
I wonder if the apparent ability of so many Jews to rationalize the ethnic cleansing and killing–even genocide**–of Palestinians may be
linked to the rationalization and celebration of the massacre of innocents that is an important part of Judaism in the form of Passover.
Not to mention that, according to scripture, the land of Canaan was obtained through mass slaughter and later Solomon’s Temple was built by the slave labor of the survivors of that genocide (I Kings 9:15-22a). There are numerous and hoary Jewish apologetics for the repulsive aspects of Passover but I find them to be unpersuasive rationalizations of what should simply be repudiated and jettisoned rather than ‘redeemed.’*** It is typically argued that Passover is a celebration of liberation but the very word refers to the passing over of “the
Destroyer” (Exod. 12:23) on his way to kill “all the first-born in the land of Egypt.” The word Passover, as it is used in scripture, is meaningless without this mass killing.
It matters not whether the massacre of innocents at the heart of Passover is mythical or symbolic; in fact, it may arguably be worse if one thinks myths of the massacre of innocents are fit material for religious instruction or tradition, esp. for children (see Exod. 12:26-27 and the “Mah Nistanah” in any Passover Haggadah). Of course, the mass killing at the heart of Passover is mentioned at Passover Seders but a bit of spilled wine hardly seems an adequate treatment.
I anticipate that some reading this will reflexively point the accusing finger at violence in the Christian and Muslim traditions and to such
critiques I say, fair enough, but violence in those traditions does not excuse or ameliorate violence and its rationalization and celebration in the Jewish tradition. So, let’s just reflect on Judaism for a while, okay?
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*All quotes above are from the Jewish Publication Society’s 1985 Tanakh translation.
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**Text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Excerpt from “Palestine Should Sue Israel for Genocide before the International Court of Justice” by Francis A. Boyle:
“For at least the past fifty years, the Israeli government and its predecessors-in-law–the Zionist Agencies and Forces–have ruthlessly
implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the
national, ethnical and racial group known as the Palestinian People. This Zionist/Israeli campaign has consisted of killing members of the Palestinian People in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(a). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also caused serious bodily and mental
harm to the Palestinian People in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also deliberately
inflicted on the Palestinian People conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in substantial part in violation
of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention.”
Source:
Biographical material on Francis A. Boyle:
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***While not discussing Passover, Jacob Pinnolis argues “In those cases [where God calls for genocide], Jewish educators in liberal schools must be willing to say that what God has asked is wrong.” I ask: What, then, of a holiday centered on a mytho-historical event where God has killed
innocents for show?
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