Necessary preparations for freedom and responsibility

Because they don't have to make their homes kosher for Passover (two sets each of dishes and flatware coming up and going down from basements or attics) Christians miss an essential element of Passover, the opportunity for a fresh beginning, at least symbolically. Yes the back aches; yes the period between a chumitzdic household and one that's ready for Passover is complex, (and if anyone know the answer to the kosher for Pesach pet food conundrum, please send me a letter) but when the process is complete, when the house is prepared, when the Seder is ordered, when the guests arrive for the annual re-telling, ironically there is within that ancient repetition a concurrent renewal.

Christians believe that Jesus, the lamb of God, sacrificed himself so that his community would be relieved of the burden and not have to perform the sacrifice ever again. Ironically Jews don't perform sacrifices any more either but unlike Christians we don't believe that the Messiah has been here and is on the way back, real soon. When Christians celebrate Easter they are marking the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. For Jews, Passover is the commemoration of the resurrection of the children of Israel, freed from the moral death of slavery. But were they ready? Does one have to be prepared for redemption?

My Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, its binding showing the stress of decades of perpetual breaking defines “redeem” (and hence its offspring “redemption”) as buying back, freeing by payment, and then more religiously, as deliverance from sin. On my 31st day my father redeemed me by paying $8.00 to a cohen, but as I was very young at the time the process seems not to have been entirely complete as now I'm required to fast on the day of the first Seder or listen to the conclusion of a unit of study. Why I do these things escapes me, but do them I do, continuing traditions in which I have no faith. Do we really need the ten thousand Passover nitpicks of ancient (and medieval and modern) rabbis? Is that redeeming?

The redemption price of our ancient ancestors was an unusual one—it was the Egyptians who paid dearly to release their captives, an O. Henry story set 3,200 years before the birth of Red Chief. It was a sudden rescue (pagan writers later claimed it was an expulsion, but what do they know) without preparation, not only sans leavened bread, but worse, minus the moral preparation for dealing with freedom. The books of Exodus and Numbers reveal this. Our sainted ancestors came to the Sea and complained; (maybe slavery in Egypt wasn't so bad); they complained in the desert; (maybe slavery in Egypt wasn't so bad); they built themselves a golden calf; (who needs Shacharit and Minchah/Maariv? Those Egyptians really knew how to pray. Party, party, party); they rejected the advice of Joshua and Caleb that with God's help they could conquer the powerful Canaanites. Given the opportunity to err, they invariably did.

What Moses seemed not to have realized (or perhaps Someone even higher than Moses?) was that freedom takes practice. It's like a spring trap, hard to open, fast to snap shut and break an unwary finger. The great 19th century Zionist Ahad Ha'Am knew this. You can't just take a bunch of Russian Jews and dump them into the wastes of Palestine without first getting them ready for the task. Yes, establish agricultural training centers, but more importantly, prepare the culture of the immigrants; teach them what it means to be a Jew outside the ghetto's walls, teach them the roots of Judaism including, but not exclusively, the Hebrew language. Herzl, for all his genius, thought the Jews transplanted from Europe would speak German and live bourgeois European lives. Ahad Ha' Am taught that there was more to establishing a Jewish presence than the need to flee persecution. To be a Jew in Israel, doing God's work (man's work—it's often the same thing) was what mattered, not merely rescuing someone from cossacks. Nobody seemed to anticipate the resentment of Arabs—who are not ready for freedom either, as witness their slaughter of each other in Gaza whenever given the opportunity.

That ancient Seder song Dayenu has it all backwards; it shouldn't be, if You only had given us this it would have been enough. It should be, it's never enough prep time. Is that the academic in me? Resurrect Moses; ask him what he thinks.