Did we learn the lessons of the Seders?

The Seders of 5767 are now only a memory. Still, it's appropriate to ask, did their stories of freedom change us, clear our eyes, awaken our consciences? Are we more free now than before the Seders? By one definition, the answer is clearly “no,” for no man is free while even a single man is a slave. And, worse, what if we are enablers of the slavers? If we are, can we ever be free or are we merely latter day Egyptians, benefiting from the new pharaohs? Here's a simple quiz.

Did you emphasize that the story of our ancestors was the story of the exploitation of oppressed labor? And then did you go out and buy a product made in a sweatshop rather than in a Union shop?

Did you read of Pharaoh and not remember that people are being smuggled into this country to work in sub-human conditions; indeed, are being smuggled into the country in sub-human ways, crammed into airless trucks from Mexico, driven through deserts, abandoned if their drivers fear capture, or if from Asia, forced to live in ships in conditions comparable to those of the Middle Passage of the 19th century which smuggled Africans to our shores?

Most Jews no longer work with their hands in crafts. If we work with our hands it's as surgeons or dentists or musicians. We work with our minds as lawyers, teachers, store owners, stock brokers. We have achieved the American dream. We have become market driven bottom liners shopping for price, ignoring the human cost that goes into the production of our inexpensive goods. And why not? Being bourgeois is comfortable, it's convenient, it's what people around the world want—as proof of which there are all those desiring to come here. But there was a time when it was us who came to this country as the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free. And then we began the American labor movement. Those who did were Yiddish speaking secular Jews; maybe they never entered a synagogue, but they were the product of the Seder, of the retelling as though they had been slaves in Egypt. They were not going to wait to be liberated by a God they did not believe in; when they searched for the Messiah, they looked into the mirror and saw their own grime-lined faces. They remembered that they had a mission as Jews, to redeem not only themselves but mankind in general, so they formed their unions and they marched for workers' rights and then when African Americans demanded equality, of the white community it was Jews who were the first to ride freedom buses and march in Selma. We've given all that up now, but at the Seder, if we did it right, we remembered when we were slaves in Egypt; if we did it right we wept at the success we've achieved at the cost of abandoning our roots as workers for the liberation of the downtrodden.

Rabbi David Teutsch of the Reconstructionist Seminary has it about right. “If we only pour ten drops of wine from our cups and do nothing more, we do not understand the significance of our act. Our joy cannot be complete when there is harshness, cruelty, or suffering in the world. We cannot wait for others to tackle the injustices of our time. What will we do this year?” Oh, Rabbi Teutsch is also a PhD—from the Wharton School of Business. He writes as a Jew, but with that business background he might also be channeling the ideas of the principal theorist of capitalistic economics, Adam Smith. Smith asked the question we too often ignore—what is it that gives something value? And his answer was straightforward and simple—it is labor. Without labor taking a raw material and transforming it into something usable, it is just a tree, not a desk; some ore, not a knife; some gold, not an earing. Smith, who brooked no interference in the economy, not from government, not from price fixing allowed only this—the formation of workmen's associations so that laborers could collectively negotiate their wages. Smith wasn't a Jew, he was, I imagine, a Presbyterian, but like Teutsch, he knew the lesson of the Seder. Messiah? Look in the mirror and see your own reflection. You are the messiah if only you would recognize the strength within yourself, within our tradition that began as slaves in Egypt.